A tiny bit rubbish, unfortunately. Perhaps that is too harsh a criticism. This book just wasn't for me. At times Dawn French threw in a few expletives, the horrible Dora calls her mum Mo a wanker a fair few times. But the whole thing just seemed a bit too "middle-Englandish." I had great expectations for this book and I wanted to read something a bit less taxing to complement the rather fast and furious pace of Imran Khan's excellently taxing "Pakistan: A Personal History." But I was really disappointed. Perhaps I have grown out of Dawn French's humour, which at one time I found really REALLY funny. This, her first novel just bored me. It was an effort to finish and I even skipped a few pages here and there as I couldn't really understand the antagonism shown towards Mo by her daughter: Dora. The other characters Mo's somewhat troubled son and her completely pointless husband just BORED me.
I didn't take anything away from this book, I was just bored. The characters are very one-dimensional, and I am surprised that Dawn French who is normally so good at teasing out subtleties, handled these characters in quite a clumsy and lazy way. There isn't that much depth to any of them, and rather than feel any sympathy for them, you just want them all to drown at sea.
