Stripped Bare - Hardcover

Turner, Lowri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0755302575 ISBN 13: 9780755302574

Publisher: Headline, 2003

Synopsis

Three women in a bate:

Beth - director of 'On the House', a prime-time homes and gardens makeover show. It's bad enough juggling the egos of neurotic tv presenters, sex-mad handymen and furious home owners, without the additional pressure from on-high to improve ratings. Tired and stressed (not to mention distressed), at home Beth needs support. So why does her husband have to work late every evening, leaving her, literally, holding the baby?

Siobhan - assistant producer of 'On the House'. On the surface, she's gorgeous and confident, with an exciting love life. But in reality, when it comes to men, she has a kamikaze instinct - and her affair with Simon (married, two children) is more off than on.

Olivia - glamorous bohemian wardrobe designer of 'On the House'. Mother of four children, she has the perfect modern marriage (including house husband). So why is Colin spending more time with Nigel, the health visitor, than with his Agent Provocateured wife?

Three women, three friends, many, many problems. Just like life really.

About this title

Review:

Stripped Bare suffers from competing incompatible strengths rather than from any actual weaknesses. Lowri Turner has worthwhile insights about fidelity and moving on: of her three heroines, Olivia is coping with her husband's coming out and Beth with the discovery that her husband Richard has been sleeping with an aggressive and ambitious pole-dancing bimbo, while Siobhan is the Other Woman to a married couple. The nightmare that their professional lives become when the make-over programme they work on has inflicted on it a tyrannical new producer and a mimsy new presenter has some entertaining satirical touches--this would have been a better book if the occasional outbreaks of wild farce and decorative nightmare had been pushed further into the foreground.

The sense here of now, and of a London of designer restaurants and inexpressibly expensive dress shops, is solidly imagined and at times gives us a real sense of what it is to be in love with the finest of clothes. All of this is good enough that one wants it to be more than a formulaic entertainment--and Turner always throttles back just at the point when she moves from the adequately competent and fluent to something more interesting. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Stripped Bare is a classy genre piece - solid, polished, back-to-basics chick lit. More sane, touching and balanced than you'd imagine. Turner reveals a good ear for dialogue and some unexpected turns of phrase (Evening Standard)

'This is a cosy, competent novel...Turner does more than just make over a rackety old plot, adding her own barbed asides on middle-aged Englishmen and the world of television, as well as some eccentric similes' Daily Mail 24/1/03 (Daily Mail)

'Stripped Bare is a classy genre piece - solid, polished, back-to-basics chick lit. More sane, touching and balanced than you'd imagine. Turner reveals a good ear for dialogue and some unexpected turns of phrase' Evening Standard (Evening Standard)

Turner reveals how to fix your job and your man and walk away with your sanity (Daily Mirror)

'Beth, Siobhan & Olivia struggle with awkward members of the public, frustrating sex lives and idiot husbands, while producing a programme on the perfect home life. Excellent' Marie Claire Feb 2003 (Marie Claire)

'Lowri Turner's novel is funny, perceptive and quite a surprise... This entertaining debut novel could be the start of an interesting novel-writing career' Express (Express)

'Turner reveals how to fix your job and your man and walk away with your sanity' Daily Mirror (Daily Mirror)

'With the surge in home improvement programmes it's no surprise a novel's been written about their world. Lowri, also a journalist, provides a fascinating fictional insight into the flamboyant characters behind the scenes' OK Magazine 18/2/03 (OK Magazine)

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0755302575
• ISBN 13: 9780755302574
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480