The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year (Penguin Picks)

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As the book went on, I became angry with the main character, because she was so totally unrealistic. The book was billed as being about a woman who'd had enough, and finally given up the struggle - and that idea interested me. What I got was a well off woman with two shitty kids and a berk of a husband, who really, I felt no one would ever have married.

The day her gifted twins leave home for university, Eva climbs into bed and stays there. For seventeen years she's wanted to yell at the world, 'Stop! I want to get off.' Finally, this is her chance. Perhaps she will be able to think. The book won a 2012 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comedy. And it was indeed a rip of modern dysfunctional, dismantled families, drowned in -isms and postmodern practices. The woman in the bed inspired different reactions from different readers, like a Rorschach test of reality. It was also a litmus test of ourselves. Where do we stand on it all right this moment in our lives. Do we condemn or condone her behavior? Do we misunderstand all the characters? Have we lost it? None of them were really likable folks. Perhaps the author made fun of all the futile, senseless, empty choices people make and the sadness of lives wasted in vain.

I found the book to be very good for the first 1/4 of its length, it was funny, it seemed to be moving towards an interesting conflict, and more funny situations. But it didn't. Idea of someone giving up on life & hiding under duvet is both easy to relate to and yet absurd, thought it was a good premise for a comedy novel.

This was ostensibly a comedy novel about a woman whose life was not going the way she wanted it to. The idea appealed to me - the thought of opting out of life, just spending time lolling about, having others serve you, letting them know how much work you've put into making the world the way it was for your family. I remember having the same feeling when I left my husband - I'd done so much for him, from renewing his car license to organizing health care, that it wore me out. Vagy én öregszem és leszek válogatósabb az évek során, vagy ez tényleg az egyik leggyengébb könyv, ami valaha a kezembe került... (a kettő nem zárja ki egymást) I read the last parts of the book, struggling to enjoy anything about it. I hated the plot, the main character, the sheer unbelievable events, that weren't even funny in their lunacy (eg. what happens to the twins at the end). What is with all the accolades in the front of the book? Did they get PAID to make those review comments. Come on, you are having me on right?Please spare yourselves and look at Townsend's large catalogue of work that isn't this novel. There's enough bad going on in the world lately without reading a novel that dresses it up in fairy lights, pokes fun at it and excuses it. A comic novel is a fantastic antidote to a dark time, but this isn't comic. Born in Leicester in 1946, Sue left school at 15 years of age. She married at 18, and by 23 was a single parent with three children. She worked in a variety of jobs including factory worker, shop assistant, and as a youth worker on adventure playgrounds. She wrote in secret for twenty years, eventually joining a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester in her thirties. Sue Townsend is a rare animal. She’s a member of that exclusive band of British writers whose works have been piled high and prominently positioned for so long that we can no longer imagine a bookshop without them. Added to this, her consistent warmth and humour and unmistakable Britishness means that – at some stage on the long road since The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾– she’s also been awarded the comfy cardigan and cosy slippers of a national treasure. Many people opening a Sue Townsend novel are likely to do so with the same curious smile that they’d greet the new book of an old personal friend and they’re certain to have a pretty good idea of what they are about to get: a plot centred around a comic failure who struggles to cope with the absurd mundanities of modern life and lives in or close to Leicester. The Woman Who Went To Bed for a Year