Ceri Radford

Another book I picked up based on the cover! I love books written in diary, email, blog, letter format. This one was written in blog entries over the course of a year. The blogger is a 50 something traditional English mum & wife. She is so clueless about the lives of her children & husband. So many times I laughed out loud! I love how she always turned to a cup of tea to cope when life threw her curve balls! I read this book quickly & found it hard to put down. I loved the English background, settings & characters. I also loved how the main character changed into a stronger wiser female. I was happy that things worked out for the whole family in the end. Life isn't perfect or always the way we want it to be but there is joy & contentment in making the best with what you have & are given. That sums up this wonderful book!… (more)

This is a really fun book. Light and fluffy and very readable. Constance is a middle-aged housewife with an adult son and teenage daughter. She is self-absorbed, somewhat snobby, very naïve and unworldly. She is so wrapped up in herself that she fails to notice that her husband is having an affair with the housekeeper, her son has a reason for not being married and that her daughter’s gap year in France is not being spent entirely in France. The humour in the book mostly derives from Constance’s blog where she describes the goings-on in the village and the ever increasing unravelling of her life as she knows it. Very amusing , would be a good book to take on a long plane trip.… (more)

The publisher sent me this one for review enticing me by saying

CONSTANCE HARDING’S (RATHER) STARTLING YEAR hilariously observes what happens when a delightfully oblivious Surrey housewife—think Bridget Jones’s insanely daffy mother—pulls back the curtain on her chintz-covered domestic fairy tale and goes in search of a life of her own. Constance has filled her time leading a bell-ringing club on Tuesday evenings, and concocting ways to get her son Rupert to settle down and her daughter Sophie to wear appropriate clothing and snag a smart man. But like it or not, change is in the air. Constance is about to learn that her perfect home conceals a scandal that would make the vicar blush. Her Lithuanian housekeeper's polyester underwear keeps appearing in her husband's study, and her husband is—well, let’s just say his career is going south—all the way to South America. But as Constance’s family life seems to be falling apart, she begins to discover a whole new side of both herself and the world around her. And she’s putting it all in her blog-thingy. Side-splittingly funny, CONSTANCE HARDING’S (RATHER) STARTLING YEAR is a witty, sharply observed and relatable tale of one woman’s midlife crisis and self-discovery (well, sort of).

I really enjoyed this one. I'm a huge fan of Brit-lit, and this one just pushed my giggle button. The main character reminded me immensely of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "Bouquet") in the BBC comedy "Keeping up Appearances." In the beginning at least, Constance Harding doesn't handle change well (or maybe not at all.) She is almost too oblivious to be believable, but in the meantime, her snooty attitude, and lack of comprehension about what is happening all around her, leave readers shaking their heads, laughing at her interpretations of events, and just snorting out loud at some of the situations described. It is written as a series of blog posts, and Constance doesn't seem to understand that the world is reading her blog!!!

If you are a fan of Brit-lit, or British comedies, this one is for you. It's a quick, fun read. It was published last year (under the title A Surrey State of Affairs),in Britain, and is now available in paperback.… (more)

“I am still alive. That is about the most positive thing I can say about my current situation. Even this state of affairs may not endure: an obstreperous airport security official confiscated my water-purification tablets. Once, in happier times, I visited the Rodin museum in Paris. There I observed the famous sculture The Gates of Hell, which featured writhing, contorted, debased and demented human forms. That is what Ibiza reminds me of.”

Constance Harding is a little perplexed by the current state of her life. Her husband is a little absent, which may have something to do with the presence of a lithe Lithuanian housekeeper; her daughter seems to be spending a lot of her gap year not in France, not helping an ecological survey, and her son seems mysteriously averse to settling down with a lovely domestic girl. When her son Rupert sets her up with a blog to document her daily happenings, she finds an outlet for her thoughts for the year.

This fluffy little domestic drama is just the thing for a lazy weekend morning. Constance is vacuous, self-obsessed and unbelievably snobbish – and highly amusing. She seems to run into a large number of obstacles, entirely of her own making, and her son’s self-imposed exile to Milton Keynes seems very wise. There were any number of clever little twists and pieces of writing; Constance’s mystification with blogs, Facebook, mobile phones – technology in general – is very funny. Mark and Tanya moving in, and Tanya’s subsequent entrepreneurial flourishing, was a poignant interlude in the superficiality of Constance’s life.

I raced through January to May without any difficulty… it was only when Sophie’s adventures went from the absurd to the ridiculous and the village antics reached their strange peak that I tired of Constance’s self-indulgent tone. I’ve only given this 6/10 because I feel it’s too light and fluffy to get more, but it is an entertaining work. If this sounds like fun to you, you might like to check out Constance’s latest adventures – a blog on the Penguin website, with parenting advice for the Duchess of Cambridge…… (more)