Friday 15 June 2012

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend




I liked reading this book. It felt a lot like a sitcom to me in places, what with funny characters and a limited number of locations, e.g. the bedroom.

There were strong characters. They were funny the way they had contrasting features that went together. For example Brian, the husband of Eva who is the woman who went to bed for a year, is a boring, weedy-looking astronomer yet he has a couple of affairs, something you wouldn’t expect. 

And putting the characters into situations where they rub each other up in the wrong way worked well too – Eva taking to the bed for a year for instance seemed to annoy everyone. My favourite character was the melodramatic student Poppy who lies and makes up stories about everything and gets a reaction from everyone she comes into contact with. 

The story is like a sitcom too in that lots of funny different things are going on. That is until near the end where things become a bit more sombre and less fun. 

This is all fine, unless you like your books to have one narrative without lots of diversions. I think it worked and I could definitely see parts of it making a good TV show.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

No comments:

Post a Comment