Fiction Pick of the Week: The Woman who went to Bed for a Year

The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend 2012

Sue Townsend, one of England’s finest comic writers, first started me laughing when she wrote about the hilarious struggles of Adrian Mole. In her latest novel we meet Eva Beaver, a dutiful wife of an adulterous husband and mother of autistic adult twins. She has scrubbed and polished, cooked and catered for her brood, never once complaining or thinking of her own needs.  She even ate out of pots while standing up when the family ate, and they never noticed. After finding tomato soup staining a chair which took her 2 years to embroider, she hurls the entire pot of soup on the chair and so begins her self-imposed exile in her bed which she does not leave for a year. This is her time to rebuild and rethink her life.  Her  transformation is at times full of laughter and tinged with sadness as she gently exposes the foibles and pretensions of the throng of characters who rally around her bedside.