- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Flame (18 Aug 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340827033
- ISBN-13: 978-0340827031
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 218,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
'Hilarious and moving' (Red magazine )
'Funny and heartwarming' (Heat magazine )
'Funny and heartwarming' (Heat magazine )
Red magazine
'Hilarious and moving'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
After a slow start I soon got caught up in this book. The book is a series of e-mails from Dot to various people in her life, mainly her two best friends, her mother, her employer and her husband. I felt that the use of e-mail was a gimmick and uncessary, in fact it was downright irritating at times. I kept finding myself thinking "you wouldn't talk like this in an e-mail" - who of us uses correct speech punctuation when recounting conversations in e-mail? Once I got past that, the story itself was well-told. I ended up ignoring the e-mail part of it and using that just as a way of identifying who the main charcater (Dot) had in mind.
Dot and her husband both work in the media industry. They have 2 kids and in addition to coping with holding demanding jobs and keeping family life together they have had to deal with Dot's treatment for cancer the previous year. Dot decides to pack in her job, almost on the spur of the moment, and spend more time with her family. Dot seems to be the only person that is thrilled about this decision and the book deals with her adjustment to domestic life. I felt that the book dealt well with the pressures of modern-day life that we all face and the dilemmas that women in particular face when juggling the demands of career and family. It also confronts head on how Dot copes with the aftermath of having had cancer and I found this enlightening and moving reading. Some of this book is flip and ironic, the tone very much tongue in cheek, other sections are very intense and deal with issues that we all struggle with. It certainly provides food for thought.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel stands out from other tales of the trials and tribulations of motherhood with its deftly handled compbination of wit and pain. It has the edge over many other titles in this genre by the lightness of touch which Katie Pearson uses to gently expose the life and death substance at the core of this story.
Through a series of emails to her friends and family we follow the struggles of Dot as she gives up her enviable position as a televison producer to stay home with her two little girls. She embraces her new role as if its her latest television production, determined to control the uncontrollable in her new world inhabited by children's entertainers, mail-order catalogues and disapproving school teachers. Dot's world gently dissolves into chaos as she discovers real-life can't be managed like a television programme.
The subtle backdrop to the comedy of Dot's life, and what gives the novel its freshness, is that Dot is a woman who has recently recovered from cancer. Katie Pearson succeeds in telling not only the story of a former professional woman trying to recover some kind of indentity as a mother at home, but as a woman who is living with cancer. This is not the tale of a woman dying from cancer, it is of someone living with it and what this author has pulled off is writing a novel which feels real, and is both funny and moving without being depressing.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked up this book because I was interested in the subject of how a woman with a demanding career would cope with being a full time mum. I did'nt realise at first that Dot (the heroine) had suffered cancer the previous year and thought this might put me off what promised to be a light read.
The subject was handled sensitively and added to the story rather than detracted. Several times I laughed out loud especially at Dot's attempts to economise which ended up anything but economical and her daughter's Calpol addiction.
The book is written as a series of e-mails from Dot to family and friends and this worked well. If I have any critisism it was the relationship with Luke was rather superfluous
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