If you've ever wished you could stop the world and get off,
withdraw from everyday life and hop into bed with the covers over
your head, this may be the book for you.
For this unlikely premise, of The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year,
is the basis of the new novel by best-selling British author Sue
Townsend.
The day her gifted twins leave home for university, librarian Eva
Beaver climbs into bed and stays there. Finally, this is her
chance. Perhaps she will be able to think.
Her husband Dr Brian Beaver, an astronomer who divides his time between gazing at the expanding universe, conducting an unsatisfying eight-year-old affair with his colleague Titania and mooching in his shed, is not happy. Who will cook dinner? Eva, he complains, is either having a breakdown or taking attention-seeking to new heights.
But word of Eva's refusal to get out of bed quickly spreads.
Alexander, the dreadlocked white-van man arrives to help Eva
dispose of all her clothes and possessions and bring her tea and
toast.
As the weeks turn into months, legions of fans are writing to her
or gathering in the street to catch a glimpse of this
'angel'.
Her mother Ruby is unsympathetic to the bed-bound messiah: 'She'd
soon get out of bed if her arse was on fire.'
A host of characters populate the narrative and the story becomes
as crowded as Eva's bedroom; and though the world keeps intruding,
it is from the confines of her bed that Eva at last begins to
understand freedom.
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year is not a challenging read -
with print size that could be deciphered from the moon, it is quick
to digest.
However there is food for thought in this funny and touching novel
about what happens when someone stops being the person everyone
wants them to be.
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend
RRP:
$37.00
Publisher: Penguin (NZ)
Available: now