Dawn French is one of those TV faces I am vaguely familiar with - always found her extremely funny but since I don't watch TV often (thanks to my job and my own superstition that its a demonic, soul-sucking invention) she was always somewhere in the corner of my eye as potentially entertaining. Than I find this book,her first novel.
I didn't want to like it. It was placed among bestsellers and had a note "extremely funny" which surely would put me off because in my imaginary world I like to think about myself as having very delicate, particular taste, contrary to long list of superficial fluff that points at completely opposite results. But curiosity got better of me and before I knew I was snorting with laughter right in the middle of bookshop (so much about my sophistication) and yes, dear reader, I bought it immediately.
It is a very Adrian Mole kind of novel, which means entertaining, funny and quick to read. A story about dysfunctional family or perhaps completely normal family, depends on point of view - if you ask me, there are far more people like Battle family than anything from postcard, just scratch the surface. Instead of private musings of Adrian Mole here we get peek into psychology of several different people who seemingly can't stand each other but stick together anyway, with lovely finale that gets reader all teary. Every character has a distinctive, recognizable voice and each of them is nutty in his own way, but we root for them because they are not just caricatures but reminds us of our own different chapters in life - how I shiver in terror when I remember myself during puberty - I don't understand why would anybody dislike this cute, little book, its very funny indeed and you can be sure that next time I will not think twice when I see Dawn French on cover.
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