Identifying with
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year
By Leigh Andrews
And what a good read it is. The woman in question is Eva Brown-Bird Beaver, a mother and housewife who decides to climb into bed on the day her super smart and somewhat socially inept twins Brianne and Brian Junior leave for university ... and stays there. Her husband Brian is initially a bit perplexed by this ‘empty nest syndrome’ and her mother and mother-in-law take it in turns to come over and see that Eva is at least fed as the housework starts building up. After a while, they all decide she must be having a mental breakdown of sorts and start ignoring her ‘selfish, silly’ behaviour. She walks to her en suite bathroom on a white sheet, so as to not touch the floor. She eventually has all the furniture (apart from the bed, of course) removed from the room and has it all painted completely white. Walls, floors, everything.
Life goes on amid this shambles, with Brian moving his lover of eight years, Titania, into the garden shed where he keeps his astronomy gear. The twins start to rebel, and attract an unfortunate new friend, Poppy, who quickly turns everyone’s life upside down. Eva befriends the dreadlocked handyman who helps out around the house as well as the window cleaner who pops by once in a while. The media catches on about Eva’s stay in bed, and paints her as a saint of sorts, drawing advice-seeking crowds to her door ... and suddenly all hell breaks loose.
I’ll stop there as I don’t want to spoil it for you, but this book definitely lived up to my expectations. The characters are lovely and easy to identify with, and the story is equal parts of sad social commentary and witty takes on the way we live. It’s a great book to curl up with and read in one go, especially if you’re feeling a bit down – it throws some interesting perspective on things!
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year
is published by Penguin.
(Created: 17 April 2012)
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