May Contain Nuts

August 8, 2005
O'Farrell (This Is Your Life
) is a big deal in Britain: joke writer for Blair; columns in the Guardian
and the Independent
; various sitcom-writing successes. In his fourth novel, Alice and David Chaplin live in south London with three young children and two conflicting obsessions: parenting their children to greatness, and shielding them from harm. Related from Alice's first-person perspective, this shrill mix produces a particularly hilarious and harebrained scheme: to protect daughter Molly from rejection by the local elite private school (and to get her in), Alice, conveniently petite and noncurvaceous, will masquerade as Molly and sit for the test. Some riotously funny situations result, with Alice deadpanning and kibitzing the whole way. Perfectly named "friends" Philip and Ffion prove perfect foils again and again, as the parents compare (precisely: Ffion e-mails an elaborate chart) their children's achievements. There are some downsides: neuroses are simply stated as fact and then slapsticked, while larger issues like urban decay and racial profiling are raised but not addressed. What O'Farrell does accomplish is a near-flawless caricature of 21st-century upper-middle-class parenthood. Agent, Georgia Garrett at A.P. Watt (London)
.

September 15, 2005
British bourgeois bohemians take competitive parenting to new lows in this social farce by the author of "This Is Your Life". Alice is a married, middle-aged Bridget Jones -dizzy, maddening, and somewhat endearing. Completely mental about her kids, she will stop at nothing to protect them -especially from being one-upped by ruthless Ffion's daughter, who is nothing short of perfect. When Alice's eldest seems certain to flub her crucial private-school entrance exams, Alice concocts a plan to impersonate her daughter and take the tests in her place. A big hitch: Alice does not have a head for math. A scene with Alice and her husband shopping for a disguise at Gap Kids is side-splittingly funny, as are some cocktail parties where the parents desperately try to impress their friends with their children's achievements. More tedious are Alice's attempts at easing her guilty conscience while continuing to ensure her daughter's successful future. Still, fun stuff, from the British equivalent of Dave Barry; for larger popular fiction collections. -Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L., WA

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