Product Description

The irresistible, laugh-out-loud debut novel hailed as “a literary sensation to rival Bridget Jones.”( Anna Wintour, Vogue)

Lucy Sweeney has three sons, a husband on a short fuse, and a tendency toward domestic disaster. Lucy is living in a constant state of emergency, and the white lies to cover up the trail of “Slummy Mummy” destruction are escalating. When she begins a flirtation with Sexy Domesticated Dad, disaster looms, making it hard for her to remember why she exchanged her career and sanity for this. Pitch-perfect and satisfyingly smart, Slummy Mummy is a hilarious novel about the dilemmas of modern marriage and motherhood for those who never discovered their domestic goddess within.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #308400 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781594483127
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Neill's humorous novel about a hopelessly disorganized mother constantly getting herself into scrapes would have benefited from abridgment. While talented narrator Kellgren ably conveys Lucy's likability and expertly creates distinctive voices for the other characters, the novel's many similar incidents blur. Lucy constantly finds herself in embarrassingly public situations (her toddler son pees on the leg of a famous actor; she uses a credit card she's reported lost and must deal with the police; she ducks down in her car to avoid being seen by someone and a crowd gathers to find out who abandoned their children in a car). After a while, the repetitive incidents become predictable, and the audiobook's pace becomes tedious. Only on the final disc does the story pick up again, with a hilariously farcical climax that throws all the characters and subplots together. The characters are likable and the story is amusing, but judicious abridging would have made for a brisker, funnier listen.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
What starts out as a harmless fantasy for Londoner Lucy Sweeney becomes a serious threat to life as she knows it. This barely coping, stay-at-home mother of three starts daydreaming about the father of one of her son's classmates, only to discover that her feelings are reciprocated. She is used to hiding bills, lost keys, and misplaced cars from her husband, not feelings for another man. When Lucy confides in her friends, they are horrified that she is willing to even entertain such a fantasy given how good a husband Tom is. Lucy's life is in constant upheaval with one crisis or another, involving children, her feelings of inferiority compared to the overachieving mothers at school, or her unwanted desire for "Sexy Domesticated Dad." The frazzled life of a full-time mom is comedic fodder for Neill, a London Times Magazine writer, as she offers a funny yet sympathetic and classically British spin on the paradoxes of women's lives. Engelmann, Patty

Review
Hilarious . . . a literary phenomenon to rival Helen Fielding's Bridge Jones's Diary and Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It . . . [Neill] plays with the chaos and comedy of 30-something metropolitan maternity and brings it to an unexpectedly moving conclusion. -- Anna Wintour, Vogue

Smart, funny, and well-observed, Slummy Mummy is a must read for any woman who loves to laugh at the often unintentional humor in domestic life. -- Karen Quinn, author of Wife in the Fast Lane and The Ivy Chronicles

What's thrilling about Slummy Mummy is as much the sparkling wit on every page as Fiona Neill's sometimes sad, often funny, always unflinching insight into the underbelly of marriage and family life. Neill pulls no punches, but she brings home her point with such grace and humor, you won't feel the sting. -- Lauren Fox, author of Still Life with Husband

Customer Reviews

This was written for me!
Finally, a book for all of us "real moms" out there. You know, we're the ones who bring store-bought cookies to the class party instead of making something from scratch (HORRORS), the ones who hastily cut a hole in a sheet and call it a costume, the ones who regularly feed our kids meat (GASP). This is the story of Lucy Sweeney, a stay-at-home mom who leads a perpetually chaotic existence. She loses credit cards, passports, keys to the house - you name it - this woman has fumbled it. Of course, she is married to a super-organized architect whose drawers of underwear are sorted by color. Readers follow Lucy throughout one wild and crazy school year, where many of her antics resemble that of Bridget Jones (another hilarious Brit). There are plenty of flirtations with disaster, including one involving a fellow class parent (whom all the mothers call "Sexy Domesticated Dad"). I love British humor, and Neill certainly showcases plenty of it in this, her debut novel. What makes her writing stand out is that it is extremely intelligent and insightful as she wonderfully describes Lucy, her best friends, as well as some of the uber-moms who are quite puzzled by her - ones I'm sure every reader will recognize in their own school communities. Okay, so some of our heroine's antics are a bit over-the-top, but it's still wicked fun to read!

Horrible Mommy Lit
This book was ferociously bad. I've read a bit of so-called "mommy-lit" and the genre has produced far better. The main character was so annoying I could hardly stand it. She seemed to have no self-control or organizational skills to the point of seeming to be mentally impaired. I feel concerned that there could possibly be women in the world this dumb and self-involved raising children. The book was completely outlandish and the situations were entirely unbelievable. This is at the bottom of the spectrum of what mommy-lit has to offer and I would urge you to find better.

Excruciatingly cute and Extremely contrieved
I agree with the other reviewer. The situations created are NOT believable. Why would a former high-powered career woman attend a school function wearing her pajamas? How can she be so purposefully dis-organized? The narrative weak and I find myself not caring to turn the pages.
I've donated the book to a library.