The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (Fiona Neill)***

Lucy is the world’s most useless mother. She has rotten apples all over her car (ewwwww I’m not getting in there!) and she gives the guy she fancies (not the guy she’s married to) a drink of wee. She also has a habit of thinking of people by nicknames, which include Yummy Mummy No. 1 and Sexy Domesticated Dad, which does get quite annoying, although it’s probably true that Lucy isn’t really seeing them as individuals.

Interestingly (and annoyingly) the characters with labels come over much more strongly than some of the characters with names. Her friends, Emma and Cathy have very little character other than an overwhelming desire for illicit sex. On the positive side, this makes Lucy’s extra-marital dalliances seem a bit more forgiveable – after all, everyone’s doing it! But it is rather disappointing as some of Fiona Neill’s other characters are brilliant.

Lucy is absolutely terrifyingly incompetent, but her talents for getting out of messes almost equal her talents for getting into them, and she’s absolutely lovely. Even her attempts to have an affair have a kind of innocence about them. I don’t quite believe that she has a history degree – maybe if it was something more creative like Art, I’d believe it – but a history degree somehow doesn’t quite fit with the character, even as an amusing contrast between Lucy Then and Lucy Now.

Becky in Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series is totally dippy, but (not that I know her actual qualifications), I can believe she probably has A Levels, if not a degree – although probably not an academic one. I’m sure there are loads of people with history degrees who are incompetent, but it’s a surprising combination, and even in a comedy it’s not always effective to bring in too many surprising combinations, especially one that is really only a small part of the book and doesn’t really advance the plot.

Robert (Sexy Domesticated Dad) is incredibly sexy, which makes Lucy’s behaviour even more reasonable, and Isobel (Yummy Mummy No. 1) manages to seem really really nice, even though the book is told from the point of view of Lucy, who finds her apparent perfection threatening.

The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy is really funny, and the jokes keep going all the way through the book. You can see the twists coming a mile off, and some of the incidents in the book just wouldn't happen. But the twists actually worked well, and some of the unrealistic bits were so funny, I didn't much care how silly they were. In lots of ways, the book is more a series of episodes than a story, but that’s okay. Some of Lucy’s mistakes are too embarrassing to be funny – you do cringe for her quite a lot - but most of them are great. Is there are phrase in the English language more horrific than Yesterday’s Knickers? I don’t think there is.