Comfort and Joy
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Bestselling writer India Knight explores the inevitable panic that family and Christmas bring in her third novel Comfort and Joy.
'I'd say Christmas was about hope. Yeah. Hope. And optimism. It's like the fairy tales in the window: for families, every Christmas is a new opportunity for Happy Ever After. No pressure, then...'
Oxford Street, two shopping days left to Christmas, and wife and mum Clara Dunphy is desperately, madly trying to make everything, not perfect, but just right for her extended family on the greatest day of the year. But then she gets distracted. . .
'Will make you laugh, maybe make you cry and keep you reading past bedtime' Lauren Laverne, Grazia
'A hilarious, bawdy, yet touching portrait of Christmas' Jilly Cooper, Guardian
'Hilarious and honest; the dialogue is sitcom-snappy and the opening scenes in Oxford Street positively Joycean' Daily Mail
India Knight is the author of four novels: My Life on a Plate, Don't You Want Me, Comfort and Joy and Mutton. Her non-fiction books include The Shops, the bestselling diet book Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet, the accompanying bestselling cookbook Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook and The Thrift Book. India is a columnist for the Sunday Times and lives in London with her three children.Follow India on Twitter @indiaknight or on her blog at http://indiaknight.tumblr.com.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sunday Times columnist and YA writer Knight (The Dirty Bits for Girls) creates a space for musings on love, family, and the simultaneous trials and delights of the holiday season in her perpetually witty novel. Readers follow Londoner Clara Dunphy n e Hutt through multiple relationships over the course of three Christmases as she searches for the perfect celebration and looks for answers to her own murky family history. While the setting and tone change from Christmas to Christmas, that unerringly familiar combination of glow and chaos, what remains constant is a cast of lovable characters, from Pat, Clara's Northern Irish mother-in-law, who insists on speaking in an offensive combination of slang and Spanish on a family trip to Morocco, to Clara's free-spirited stepsisters. Dotting the landscape are Clara's questions about the biological father she never knew but can't stop thinking about. Although there's little in the way of plot and the extended family can get Rockwellian, Knight makes up for it with well-paced dialogue and amusing and insightful anecdotes. The author captures the spirit of the season while giving us a glimpse into one modern family's struggle with children, marital turmoil, and materialism.
