Hilarious, sweet, fun and crazy. Love those qualities...in a book. ( )

I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first. ( )

Sharp, insightful and humorous satire of safety-conscious, achievement-obsessed parenting gone haywire. ( )

Motherhood red in tooth and claw. Children play a central role in the battle of the upper-middle-class snobs, where a place at the prestigious private school is the ultimate prize. Ambitious, neurotic, paranoid parents ferry their 11-year-olds from maths tutor to fencing lessons, insulating them in their posh streets and mammoth 4x4s from the evil influence of people who are not like us (mainly because they don't have as much money). The author's observations on the aspirational middle class are comically exaggerated, but nevertheless they have real satirical teeth. Occasionally I laughed out loud. Towards the end, the playing out of the book's moral message inevitably takes some of the edge off the humour, but there are still some delightful one-liners. If you have mentally put your toddler down for a college at Oxford or Cambridge, or regard family games mainly as a way of cramming facts into your child's head, then this is the book you need to read. MB 14-xi-2008 ( )

Only parents who've ever had their children enrolled in the UK school system can understand the dilemmas of going public vs private. John O'Farrell makes laughing stock out of all of our neuroses. A much needed kick in the rear! ( )