The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend

Description from Amazon:

The day her children leave home, Eva climbs into bed and stays there. She’s had enough - of her kids’ carelessness, her husband’s thoughtlessness and of the world’s general indifference. Brian can’t believe his wife is doing this. Who is going to make dinner? But Eva won’t budge; and soon she realises to her horror that everyone has been taking her for granted - including herself.

 

With fond memories of the Adrian Mole books, I thought this would have the same dry humour and keep me entertained. Someone said to me you need to enjoy Monty Python or Douglas Adams to get this and since I enjoy both, I was ready. But no. It was neither enjoyable nor memorable. Well maybe memorable, but all for the wrong things.

Eva decides to check out. Now we’ve all been there, so yup, a day in bed sounds super. But a year? C’mon. I thought there would be some great intellectual insight as in why and how this was going to play out but it’s literally her in bed and that’s it.

So you have Brian, Eva’s husband, who has been having an affair with a colleague for eight years and who decides to move in to their garden shed. Both of them are rather nasty pieces of work. The kids are absolutely awful and their uni “not friend” Poppy is a manipulative, will-do-anything-for-money person. Brian and Eva’s mothers come around to help but often forget to even take Eva food, so she begins to waste away. Alexander is about the nicest of the lot, a white van man who has fallen in love with Eva and determined to look after her seeing as Brian won’t. He has two children though, so the house is getting pretty full.

There are a number of side stories to this, but basically someone decides Eva is able to fix problems, causing a media frenzy, people camping outside her house demanding to see her, and all-around chaos.

The book hits loads of triggers and the characters are all nasty and mean, with lots of screaming and scheming going on. It’s really rather distasteful. I can handle plenty of odd plots but this just didn’t hit the mark. Granted I did laugh twice so there’s that. When Eva asked Brian to buy her tubing and packets so that she didn’t have to leave the bed to go to the ensuite bathroom I should’ve just stopped there and then. Since the title said a year, I figured there was an ending and that there would be a big reveal. Got to the end and went Oh. Complete letdown. Plus there were pages and pages after it about other books, so when the end came, I thought there was more to come about her reason. But no. I was really disappointed in this.