A Tiny Bit Marvellous

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All in all the Battle family is one we have all heard of before, and for me there was little in originality in their characters and stories. I did wonder whether Dawn had decided to make Peter a rather unusual teenager to provide some respite from Dora’s angst, or she would have had two angst-ridden teenagers on her hands which would probably be just a bit too much for most readers. Yes, it was funny, but it was also sometimes touching, sometimes poignant, and even thought provoking. The ploy of keeping the 2 "heroes" - Nan; the quiet, constant, wisdom of experience and Dad; the voiceless, much-derided, barely present figure very much in the background definately worked for me and revealing the latters name only with the very last word of the book was tear-jerkingly poignant. You will see chaos and flood of insecurities and stupidity and height of delusion in some chapters and then calmness and stability in some.

We don't get to know Husband's name until the end of the book when he is finally appreciated for the loving, caring, doting husband that he is. Synopsis: This first novel by Dawn French is told through the eyes of a mother and her two teenage children. With each chapter told from the point of view of one character, Dawn French’s witty and engaging novel offers us an honest and insightful account into the relationships between children and parents.There's 17-year-old daughter Dora who blames Mo for, like, EVERYTHING and Peter who believes he's quite simply as darling and marvellous as his hero Oscar Wilde.

Yes, we know teenage girls overuse 'like' and we've seen shallowness and mother-hating (but mother-loving underneath all the vitriol, ahhh) a thousand times before. Ovog puta to kaže Sunday Times, a obično ne zaostaju za time ni New York Times i ostale "papirnate kuće". She has recently split up with her long-standing boyfriend of six weeks, Sam, and is planning to become famous thanks to the upcoming X Factor auditions.

Of course this means the reader can relate to them easily, as there are probably aspects of this family we have all experienced at some point, but unfortunately for me it all became just a bit of a cliché. There's Mo, the tired child psychiatrist mother, Dora, the Facebook obsessed 17 year old, and Peter, the precocious 16 year old obsessed with Oscar Wilde.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous may have improved in the last 100 pages, but I'm afraid that I just couldn't suffer through it to find out which is a shame because I so wanted to like it. I love her writing style, it’s so unique and there’s an excerpt from another novel of hers ‘Oh Dear Silvia’ at the end of this book and I read it and LIKED IT SO MUCH I WANT SOMEONE TO GIFT ME THAT BOOK NOW SO I CAN READ THE REST OF THAT AWESOMENESS. She is taking a huge risk regardless of the consequences that it can cause her family, either driving them apart or pulling them closer together.The story is told in diary form by Mo, the matriarch of the family and her two teenage children, Dora and Peter.

The only character I found enteraining to read from was Oscar and even he got old after several long chapters. Dora is a nightmare daughter who truly believes she knows everything, hates and abuses everyone and leaves obscene messages on her mother's phone.It is done in the style of a diary entry type book, but with no dates, just different chapters for each member of the household. She is fed up with her life that is the same, day in day out, she is a wife and mother to two teenagers, Dora who is seventeen and has self-esteem problems and holds her mum responsible for everything going wrong in her life and Peter who truly believes he is Oscar Wilde, his hero. So it might bet better towards the end, but I skipped ahead quite a bit to see if it improves, and it doesn't.