Why Mummy Swears

Funny but not ss good as the others

I had already read this book before It was chosen for our reading group, and I enjoyed it even more the second time round.
the book is well written and the characters and situations are believable.
definitely a good read

Unfortunately I just couldn’t get along with this book. I did appreciate the author’s observations of the humour in everyday situations, and the honesty in the mother’s responses and thoughts. However, the style of writing really irritated me, and became a distraction. To be fair, I am probably not in the book’s target readership, with my baby and young children days long behind me!

The eponymous “Mummy” (aka Ellen) has two fairly typical children, a husband who is constantly off travelling the world on business trips and a loyal dog who remains fairly sane whatever the world throws at him. With a house that needs constant upkeep and children who are making constant demands, Ellen decides she needs to go back to work to earn some much needed cash. She surprises herself by getting a very good job indeed, but somehow fails to mention the family and kids to her work colleagues. Trying to live up to her single party-girl image at work as well as running a household single-handedly proves to be something of a challenge. As she lurches from one crisis to another with the kids running wild, Daddy totally oblivious and the pressure mounting at work, Ellen somehow manages to find the time to keep a diary which she shares with us in this book.

There is an awful lot to like about this book. It is fast-paced, jaunty, witty and very clever. There are a couple of laugh-out-loud moments (always embarrassing when they happen on the bus), but on the whole it is just very amusing. The observations are extremely perceptive and there are numerous situations which I could relate to, despite neither being married or a Mum. It is an easy read, full of situations that we have all encountered, struggled with and probably messed up. The characters are well developed and are plausible, believable and likeable. It reminded me very much of Allison Pearson’s “How hard can it be”, in terms of both content and style.

One minor quibble was that I did find the length of the sentences a bit of a problem at times. The style of writing is almost “stream of consciousness” which does lead to some very long-winded sentences and I got a bit lost sometimes. This was a particular issue when a very long essay on a subsidiary, but related, topic appeared mid-sentence in parentheses – by the time I got to the end of the essay I had trouble picking up the continuation of the original sentence as I was off in a different place, different time-zone, different planet! Having said that, the logic and syntax of these “stream of consciousness” ramblings is actually impeccable – it just takes a bit of following!
I also expected the manic and frenetic writing style to irritate me after a while, but, somewhat surprisingly this didn’t actually happen. Once I got into the swing of it I enjoyed every minute.

I loved this book and would thoroughly recommend it. I haven’t read Gill’s first book but will definitely be keeping an eye out for it.