The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

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The humour gets progressively darker throughout the novel until finally leaving you at a place in which you are not altogether sure you are comfortable to be. Two books hardly make a literary trend, but it's interesting that Ali Smith's most recent novel, There But For The, also featured a protagonist who refused to come out of a bedroom. Prior to reading this book, my only experiences of Sue Townsend were Adrian Mole, whom at my mother's suggestion I read when I was younger. And, in a rather more welcome but equally complicated development, Eva meets Alexander, a dreadlocked painter and odd-job man who turned his back on a career as a "wanker banker" after writing off a high-performance car and killing his wife in the process. Her husband Dr Brian Beaver, an astronomer who divides his time between gazing at the expanding universe, an unsatisfactory eight-year-old affair with his colleague Titania and mooching in his shed, is not happy.

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

As she tells the bemused Brian: “I haven’t used my brain for so long the poor thing is huddled in a corner waiting to be fed. But Eva, it quickly becomes apparent, envisages a radical rethink of her entire life, a dismantling of not only its immediate domestic structures but a reappraisal of the 50 years that have brought her to this point; in the bedroom that she arranges to have stripped of all unnecessary fixtures and fittings, and to have its every remaining surface painted luminous white, she interrogates her memories and beliefs, attempting to free her thoughts from the received ideas and assumptions that have, it now appears, ensnared her.

As a comedy it failed on every level, and, as a meaningful or poignant tale of modern life, it failed doubly.

The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Detailed Review Summary of The Woman Who Went To Bed For A

In August of 1988, Lynne Cox decided to take on an even bigger challenge: she would spend an entire year in bed. olyan mértékű kikapcsolódás és feltöltődés, mint máskor egy nehéz nap végén beülni valahova barátokkal vagy elmenni valami kulturális eseményre. She was also allowed to leave her bed for short periods of time, to use the bathroom or take a shower. Added to this, her consistent warmth and humour and unmistakable Britishness means that – at some stage on the long road since The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾– she’s also been awarded the comfy cardigan and cosy slippers of a national treasure. I couldn't see any meaning beneath the selfish, nonsensical and ofttimes cruel activities of the characters, and I tried my best to find it.And from this odd but comforting place she begins to see both the world and herself very, very differently. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Townsend’s bestselling the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 133⁄4 (Penguin has just brought out a special edition to celebrate) and in the intervening years she’s written seven more Adrian Mole stories, five novels and a string of plays. I've been a Sue Townsend fan ever since Adrian Mole painted his room black (except for the show-through Noddy hats) in The Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4. She didn't have to get up and make breakfast for anyone, yell at anyone else to get up, empty the dishwasher or fill the washing machine, iron a pile of laundry, drag a vacuum cleaner up the stairs or sort cupboards and drawers, clean the oven or wipe various surfaces .