Comfort and Joy

by IndiaKnight (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.84

  Bestselling writer India Knight explores the inevitable panic that family and Christmas bring in her third novel Comfort and Joy. 'I'd say Christmas was about hope. Yeah. Hope. And optimism. It's like the fairy tales in the window: for families, every Christmas is a new opportunity for Happy Ever After. No pressure, then...' Oxford Street, two shopping days left to Christmas, and wife and mum Clara Dunphy is desperately, madly trying to make everything, not perfect, but just right for her extended family on the greatest day of the year. But then she gets distracted. . . 'Will make you laugh, maybe make you cry and keep you reading past bedtime' Lauren Laverne, Grazia 'A hilarious, bawdy, yet touching portrait of Christmas' Jilly Cooper, Guardian 'Hilarious and honest; the dialogue is sitcom-snappy and the opening scenes in Oxford Street positively Joycean' Daily Mail India Knight is the author of four novels: My Life on a Plate, Don't You Want Me, Comfort and Joy and Mutton. Her non-fiction books include The Shops, the bestselling diet book Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet, the accompanying bestselling cookbook Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook and The Thrift Book. India is a columnist for the Sunday Times and lives in London with her three children.Follow India on Twitter @indiaknight or on her blog at http://indiaknight.tumblr.com.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2010

  $3.33

  This is the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of India Knight's darkly comic Comfort and Joy . It is read with humour and sensitivity by Lucy Brown, the star of the hit show Primeval . It's December 23rd and Clara Dunphy is running around Oxford Street like a blue-arsed fly trying to buy presents. She wants to make Christmas perfect: it's a lifelong ambition. And a challenging one at the best of times, even without taking her sixteen guests - sorry, loved ones - and their varying degrees of social dysfunction into account. Meanwhile, something weird has happened to her marriage, and the ho, ho, ho is thin on the ground. Why does Christmas have such an emotional hold over us? Why does family stuff hit the peak of its madness on December the 25th? And is it okay to want more than you have, when what you have seems so enviable from the outside? A blackly funny, tender dissection of the meaning of love - family love, sibling love, children love - Comfort and Joy will make you laugh and cry.