The woman who went to bed for a year [sound recording]

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.