The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

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While the whole novel is far-fetched, this element asks the reader to suspend more disbelief than is reasonable and is just a bit of nonsense too far. And from this odd but comforting place she begins to see both the world and herself very, very differently. 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.

The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year - Penguin Books UK

With a teeming cast (and there are several more characters who come and go with a certain randomness) and an inviolable organising principle – Eva will not leave her bed, come what may – Townsend was unlikely to run short of comic opportunities. Townsend's fiction has often hinted at a darkness beneath the humour, but this novel gives it freer rein than previously. But then there's this they are never good enough thing going on that I really don't know if these kids would ever grow up normal. A tour de force by a comic genius and if it isn't the best book published this year, I'll eat my bookshelf.Alexander the dreadlock white-van man arrived to help Eva dispose of all her clothes and possessions and bring her tea and toast. None of the characters seemed to talk to each other, instead they parroted 'meaningful' speeches at each other. After spending her entire married life caring for her astronomer husband Brian and their gifted but odd twins, 50-year-old Eva decides she’s had enough of being taken for granted and takes to her bed to think.

The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year - Google Books The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year - Google Books

In this book, Eva's twin children, autistic brilliants who never relate to anyone else, have left for university, and Eva decides to retire to her bed.

She was later diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the brain. There’s also no explanation as to why these same events hadn’t happened a year ago or what in particular triggered their occurrence now. And by this point I had totally had enough of this woman feeling pooping by walking a few steps to her en-suite was just totally ridiculous.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year, By Sue Townsend The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year, By Sue Townsend

It is an easy read, yet the one which leaves you with major question of why you wasted all that time reading about a fifty-year old eccentric woman along with all other eccentric English people of various ages in the novel which clearly demonstrates how very strange and different Englishmen are. Then add on to that the private tuition, which involves careful calibration of the precise amount of chivvying, cajoling and coaxing, the mix of encouragement, irony, gentle reassurance or simulated despair required to bring out the shy or quash the cocky, relax the nervous or bolster the confidence of the timid.The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year’ does however raise and allude to more serious points – Eva who doesn’t have a particularly difficult, challenging or stressful life – something which is readily acknowledged by her and yet…. The idea appealed to me - the thought of opting out of life, just spending time lolling about, having others serve you, letting them know how much work you've put into making the world the way it was for your family. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below.

The woman who went to bed for a year - Henpicked The woman who went to bed for a year - Henpicked

And when Eva starts screaming in the background while her husband is talking on the phone, he avoids any embarrassment by explaining that the television is on and somebody has ‘just won a lot of money on Eggheads. I picked this one off my book shelf, a REAL book, breaking away from the millions to review on my Kindle. One of my favourite lines: Eva swiftly turns into an internet sensation, with weirdos camping opposite her house, awaiting the Second Coming or something comparable. Eva begins her retreat as a fairly typical fed-up housewife, sick of being over-used and underappreciated, at once liberated and made redundant by the departure of her children, keen to revivify the brain that seems to her like a "poor thing .What a waste of time on a long review for a boring one star book, sometimes you just have to get it all out. Eva’s marriage falls apart, and the twins – Brianne and Brian Jr, named after their astronomer father, Brian – are revealed to have been the glue that previously held Eva’s life together.