May Contain Nuts - Hardcover

O'Farrell, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385606087 ISBN 13: 9780385606080

Publisher: Doubleday, 2005

Synopsis

Alice and David are worried parents. Are their children falling behind with their schoolwork, their music lessons and the number of sleepover invitations received this month? Or are all these extra lessons causing them to miss out on physical exercise? Maybe they could find a maths tutor who'd be prepared to swim alongside them and explain binary numbers while the children practiced their breast-stroke? This permanent sense of crisis is coming to a climax as their eldest child looks set to fail her entrance exam for the hallowed school on which they have pinned all their hopes. Many mothers can't help wanting to do everything for their children, but Alice takes this controlling maternal obsession one step further. She takes the test in place of her daughter. With a baseball cap pulled low over her face, she shuffles into a hall of a two hundred kids and faces her first examination for twenty years. But it is only once she puts herself in the place of one her children that she starts to realise the sort of exhausting pressures that her kids have been under...

About this title

About the Author

John O'Farrell is the author of two bestselling novels, THE BEST A MAN CAN GET and THIS IS YOUR LIFE, and the bestselling memoir THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER. His name has flashed past at the end of such productions as SPITTING IMAGE, HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU and CHICKEN RUN. He writes a weekly column in the Guardian and a collection of his journalism was recently published as GLOBAL VILLAGE IDIOT. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

From the Inside Flap

The other day there was a feature on the radio about the dangers of asteroids falling from outer space. When David came home he wanted to know why the children were splashing around in the paddling pool wearing their cycle helmets. Alice never imagined that she would end up like this. Is she the only mother who feels so permanently panic-stricken at the terrors of the modern world or is it normal to sit up in bed all night popping bubble wrap? She worries that too much gluten and dairy may be hindering her children s mental maths. She frets that there are too many cars on the road to let them out of the 4x4. Finally she resolves to take control and tackle her biggest worry of all: her daughter is definitely not going to fail that crucial secondary school entrance exam. Because Alice has decided to take the test in her child s place... May Contain Nuts is a wonderful satire on the all-consuming madness of modern parenthood; a compelling journey across divided inner-city communities to a place where normal people don t spend hundreds of pounds to have their four-year-old s scribbles assessed for signs of genius or pay a handyman to assemble their Kinder Egg toys. With the comic eye for detail that has sent his books to the top of the bestseller lists, John O Farrell has produced a funny and provocative book that will make you laugh, cry and vow never to become that sort of parent. And then you can pass it on to your seven-year-old, because she really ought to be reading grown-up novels by now...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385606087
• ISBN 13: 9780385606080
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320