The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife
Anon
Collins €??
COUNTRY livin' is the life for me, reckons the freelance journalist Martha Mole, and off she and her husband go to live in Paradise.
Anon, apparently, is Daisy Waugh, who has written the Country Mole column in the Sunday Times for a couple of years.
In this very, very funny book, Martha Mole finds herself all aloney-o for most of the time, with her husband living in London and visiting on occasional weekends.
He starts out living on a fold-out bed in his office, but soon - as Martha's friend Hatty splits up with her lazy lump Damian, he's living in Hatty's place, while he helps Hatty to send Damian's script to the Oscars.
Martha, meanwhile, is stuck in Stepford. She's pretty whiney to start with, but by the time she's had an affair with the builder, got pregnant, got a Bonnie Tyler haircut from the local hairdresser (horrors!) and gone to live in the bath because the smell of paint intensifies her morning sickness, you'll be sick from laughing.
Martha is obviously a born and bred city girl, who regards country people as moronic mumsies.
She compounds her miseries by writing a column, a la Country Mole, and her neighbours soon begin to ask her if she's the one who's writing it.
Since she gives them all mocking nicknames and reveals all their secrets, she's definitely heading for trouble.
It's a very, very funny book, and the perfect Christmas read. Apparently, the author's back in the city now.
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