The Sunday Salon – Mums@Home

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are still missing in action and I’ve temporarily abandoned ‘I’m Watching You’  for a couple of Sophie King books after seeing her at a talk recently. The first ‘The School Run’, I finished yesterday, the second Mums@Home, I’m more than half way through, would probably be on the home run to finishing it actually (these books are nothing but easy reads) if Girl Lacer hadn’t snuggled up to me on the sofa whilst I was reading and said,

“Mummy, that’s not housework.”

“Mummy, you should be doing housework.”

“Mummy, you should be putting washing out on the line or something,”

She pulls me off the sofa.

“Come on then!”

So, I put the washing on the line, which did actually need doing, as does the hedge, which Mr. Lacer wanted to know whether I was doing it “sometime this weekend or was it the next?”. I have to do the hedge but I’m currently on the sofa with Mr. Rabbit who’s asleep, whilst Boy Lacer goes and gets him a drink and some icecream.

Anyway back to Mums@Home, it is very much like The School Run, in fact two of the characters from The School Run do make a brief appearance as just about the only happy people in Mums@Home (although in keeping with what seems to be the norm in Sophie King books they were pretty miserable in The School Run). In both The School Run and Mums@Home, which as their titles suggest are about parenting and children plus also about the relationships between the parents, the characters are miserable because a) their partner has cheated on them b) their partner is possibly cheating on them c) their partner has probably done something dodgy and the children are all complete nightmares. All in all although it is perfectly readable it does get a bit depressing, although books where the parents are happily in love and the children are reasonably behaved little angels probably don’t make much of a good read.