The Birds and the Bees (Milly Johnson)***

Parents are so annoying sometimes. I’m not talking about the parents in this book, although I’m sure they’d annoy me too if I happened to live with them. But my parents loved this book and now I feel like I ought to have loved it too. And I suppose I did in a way. I stayed up all night to finish it, and I was satisfied when the book turned out exactly how I wanted it to turn out. But how can my dad tell me this is the best book I’ve read recently? Why do parents always know better than me? I’m the one who was offered a place to study English at UCL. (I turned it down, but that’s hardly the point.) So I should know a little bit about reading. But that’s the thing about parents. They always know best.

The parents in this book also know best. Catherine, the best friend of the heroine, Stevie, is clearly some kind of Superwoman who juggles what seems like a huge number of children, not to mention Stevie’s son Danny and Stevie herself. Only Catherine’s considerable warmth and generosity save her from being annoyingly perfect. I love Catherine. I just wish she wouldn’t go on about how sweet Stevie is all the time. There are many adjectives that spring to mind when I think of Stevie, but ‘sweet’ is not one of them.

Oh, I quite like Stevie now, but it was an uphill struggle to begin with. Any author who keeps going on about how nice her main character is - and also makes the other characters point it out at every opportunity - really gets on my nerves. I’m not interested in what Milly Johnson thinks of Stevie. It’s up to me to decide what she’s like. When I finally did start to like her, about halfway through the book (the point when the story really got going), I still didn’t think she was sweet. She’s far too tough and feisty with too much of a no-nonsense approach to be described as sweet. Yes, she is very generous, and she certainly seems altruistic. But she’s too strong and redoubtable to be my idea of sweet. (But, to be honest, if Johnson had described about her in ways that I agreed with, that would probably have annoyed me too. Just get on with telling the story, woman!)

And Stevie’s name! Apparently she’s named after some female poet I’ve never heard of, which is fine in theory, but it was just a bit distracting. I didn’t mind that the other girl was called Jo: that’s an established and common female name. But giving your heroine an unusual female name for no particular reason is just annoying.

If there had been just one joke about Stevie’s name, like if Adam had insisted on calling her Stephanie - which would have really annoyed her, as well as fitting in with the idea of Adam’s stubborn nature - there would have been a point to it. Or if she’d signed up to join Adam’s gym online, it might have been quite funny if he came to meet the new male member of the gym and instead found the fiancée of the man who ran off with his wife. Or if Stevie’s parents (who make the briefest appearances) were very obviously the type to bestow an unusual name upon their daughter - instead of seeming more the type not to bother naming her at all - I’d have understood.

Once the story does start, Johnson’s writing becomes fast-paced and witty, but her characters still have sufficient depth (well, apart from shallow bitch Jo) to make you interested in what happens. Even the smallest characters seem very real. Like Stevie’s nice but excruciating friend Pam – probably everyone in the world either knows someone like Pam or has heard of someone like her.

The story was a bit slow to start off with. The early chapters mostly show Stevie having her hair done, refusing to talk to Adam, and thinking about how miserable she is. I got a bit bored with that part. It would have been much more interesting if Adam had told Stevie his plan for both of them to win their partners back near the beginning; Stevie could then have dismissed it, before gradually coming around to it. At least then you’d feel the characters were progressing in some way.

Adam the Scotsman makes a rather bad first impression too, but that works well. He is actually really lovely in a big, loud sort of way. Johnson’s transcription of his sexy Scottish accent sounds very authentic, even if his generosity doesn’t.

Matthew, Stevie’s ex, is a totally useless prat who has his brain between his legs. Nevertheless, he, if anyone, is the ‘sweet’ one – incredibly stupid, but well-meaning when he remembers other people have feelings too. He’s not unlike Matthew in Getting Rid of Matthew. I must write a book one day about useless Lucy; Isobel, who seems to have the perfect life but is actually pretty fucked up; James the wanker, and Matthew the immature prat.

And, yes, Stevie is a writer, but I’ll forgive Johnson for writing about a writer. It does give the plot a very interesting twist. And, yes, Stevie is intelligent enough to be literate. Easily. Forget the basic psychology Adam keeps going on about. Stevie knows way more about people than that annoying psychologist in The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy. So I quite liked her in the end.