My Life on a Plate - by India Knight (Paperback)

About the Book

Optioned for film and published in sixteen countries, this British sensation explodes the myth that all people need to be truly happy is love and marriage. Meet thirty-three-year-old Clara Hutt: irreverent, sometimes unkind, always self-deprecating. Clara is a part-time magazine writer with a perpetually mysterious husband and two small boys, and some days she wakes up with the feeling that her life isn't all it should be. Her extended stepfamily is forever making demands; her sons are constantly murdering each other; all the other mothers at the school gate are perfectly groomed, but Clara is in her pajama bottoms and her husband's sweater.
With razor-sharp wit and a healthy dose of insight into married life, India Knight takes readers on a continually entertaining ride through one woman's bumpy search for fulfillment.

Book Synopsis

Optioned for film and published in sixteen countries, this British sensation explodes the myth that all people need to be truly happy is love and marriage. Meet thirty-three-year-old Clara Hutt: irreverent, sometimes unkind, always self-deprecating. Clara is a part-time magazine writer with a perpetually mysterious husband and two small boys, and some days she wakes up with the feeling that her life isn't all it should be. Her extended stepfamily is forever making demands; her sons are constantly "murdering each other"; all the other mothers at the school gate are perfectly groomed, but Clara is in her pajama bottoms and her husband's sweater.
With razor-sharp wit and a healthy dose of insight into married life, India Knight takes readers on a continually entertaining ride through one woman's bumpy search for fulfillment.

Review Quotes

"a jaunty, post-feminist fairy tale..." Boston Globe

"An enormously charming, often scabrously funny first novel . . . The irrepressible Clara is also irresistible: as she deconstructs and reconstructs herself endlessly, there are insights aplenty about making do, holding on, and letting go." Kirkus Reviews

"Witty and raucous . . . entertains while animating many of the common misconceptions people have about marriage." Publishers Weekly

"Witty commentary on middle-class mores and humor make this . . . novel an enjoyable read." Library Journal

At once realistic and hopeful." Booklist, ALA, Boxed Review

"A wickedly funny and painfully honest comic novel. It comforts those of us who have experienced the misery of marital desertion and an infestation of headlice. It's a triumph. I intend to buy it for everybody I love."--Sue Townsend, author of The Adrian Mole Diaries

"Well-written, neatly constructed and . . . funny . . . Like her creator, Clara has a talent for seeing the farcically tragic in all that surrounds her."--The Guardian (UK)

"Disturbingly funny . . . India Knight has a gritty understanding of the games married people play. This witty writer has written a snappy account of modern marriage with an underlying seriousness." --Sunday Times (UK)

"India Knight's wildly funny survey of women's lives will leave you nodding in recognition and laughing out loud. Picture Nora Ephron (of Heartburn) meeting Nora Helmer (of Ibsen's A Doll's House) for cake, coffee, and fireworks. Delicious." --Regina Barreca, author of Perfect Husbands (and Other Fairy Tales)

"Sharp, witty . . . Knight's novel is groundbreaking in current fiction in that it attempts to investigate modern marriage: what it does to women, their sex drive and their sense of self." Marie Claire (UK)

"Knight's funny, assured portrait . . . combines chick lit with journalistic lifestyle-ese (and the power of YSL's Touch Eclat)."--Independent (UK)

"So vigorous, funny and opinionated . . . Not only full of brilliantly funny and knowing sentences, but of heroically ghastly characters too." Evening Standard (UK)

"India Knight dishes us a helping of humour and heartache on the condition of the modern Mrs." Elle (UK)

"This novel makes a refreshing change from the 'single girl seeks man with increasing desperation' theme . . . The style is zappy and witty, with clever and perceptive dialogue...Clara is such a riotously outspoken and unpretentious heroine that you cannot help loving her."--The Bookseller (UK)

"A comic tour de force."--Telegraph --