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Summary
Summary
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 .
Her husband Dr Brian Beaver, an astronomer who divides his time between gazing at the expanding universe, an unsatisfying eight-year-old affair with his colleague Titania and mooching in his shed, is not happy. Who will cook dinner? Eva, he complains, is either having a breakdown or taking attention-seeking to new heights.
But word of Eva's refusal to get out of bed quickly spreads.
Alexander the dreadlock white-van man arrived to help Eva dispose of all her clothes and possessions and bring her tea and toast. Legions of fans are writing to her or gathering in the street to catch a glimpse of this 'angel'. Her mother Ruby is unsympathetic- She'd soon get out of bed if her arse was on fire.'
And, though the world keeps intruding, it is from the confines of her bed that Eva at last begins to understand freedom.
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year is a funny and touching novel about what happens when someone stops being the person everyone wants them to be. Sue Townsend, Britain's funniest writer for over three decades, has written a brilliant novel that eviscerates modern family life.
Praise for Sue Townsend-
'Brilliant, sharp, honest, moving, an exquisite social comedy.' Daily Telegraph
'A tour de force by a comic genius and if it isn't the best book published this year, I'll eat my bookshelf.' Daily Mirror , Books of the Year
Visit www.suetownsend.co.uk
Author Notes
Sue Townsend was born in Leicester, England on April 2, 1946. She left school at fifteen and worked a series of jobs before becoming a full-time author. She was best known for her books about the neurotic diarist Adrian Mole including The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. Her other works include The Queen and I, Number Ten, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman Aged 55¾, and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year. She died after a stroke on April 10, 2014 at the age of 68.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Guardian Review
Which of us, in a moment of feeling insufficiently cherished or bewildered by the world's demands, has not felt that the most sensible option would be to take to our bed? We might not take matters as far as Eva Beaver, a librarian from Leicester who dispatches her husband to deliver their twin children to university, throws tomato soup over a chair she's spent two years embroidering and then trots upstairs to the comfort of her crisp white sheets. Eva, it quickly becomes apparent, envisages a dismantling of not only her immediate domestic structures but a reappraisal of the 50 years that have brought her to this point. In her bedroom she interrogates her memories and beliefs, attempting to free her thoughts from the received ideas and assumptions that have, it now appears, ensnared her. This is a clever exploration of the immense power someone who decides to halt their story suddenly acquires. And in Eva Beaver's case, once she's opted for a life lying down, what surprises both us and her is not that she's there, but that we haven't all joined her. - Alex Clark Which of us, in a moment of feeling insufficiently cherished or bewildered by the world's demands, has not felt that the most sensible option would be to take to our bed? - Alex Clark.