I grew up with Adrian Mole, he was a geek that we all loved and laughed at and as a teenage girl at the time it gave us an insight into boys and what they did with rulers in their bedrooms! I've grown up and so has Sue Townsend's characters. Eva Beaver a tired, disillusioned Mother of two has had enough and calls a halt to her day to day mundane existence and takes to her bed!
I would love to take to my bed even for a night but usually I'm too knackered to have even got in mine and quite regularly fall asleep on the couch. Eva decides enough is enough and whilst Brian; her very intelligent, emotionally retarded husband is off delivering the Aspergers twins to Uni, Eva goes to bed and refuses to leave.
I know how she feels when one thing after another falls apart without her intervention. It is quite different when somebody dies to slot in to the void that the departed loved one has left, but to still have the person around just refusing to intervene or help or even ...walk to the bathroom is a different matter entirely!
I haven't read a 'Laugh out loud' book for a long time, probably not since Bridget Jones first hit our shelves. My son was traumatised that I would burst out laughing on the bus or in a cafe but I quite literally couldn't help it.
In more ways than one this book hit home to me. Eva becomes a celebrity online through Twitter and from the people camping outside her home branding her a 'Saint' and a 'prophet' - Everybody needs a hero and unfortunately there are very few these days.
I enjoyed this book and the mix of characters and inter-character relationships. I heard last week that 47% of parents don't LIKE their children! I have always thought that you can love somebody but that doesn't mean you have to like them very much, I relate to Eva on lots of levels.
A great book for any woman that has had enough and wonders what it would be like to 'leave' her situation. I was however disappointed with the ending, it felt very rushed and unfinished and that ruined the book for me. I'm back off to my Zombie fiction as we always know how that will end!
6/10
