My Life On a Plate

India Knight

- 4.5 • 16 Ratings

- £2.99

- £2.99

My Life on a Plate is the hilarious and moving first novel by bestselling author India Knight.

Does secretly fantasizing about buying slut shoes and see-through tops make you a Bad Mother? What about wearing pyjama bottoms on the school run?

Clare Hutt (known to herself as Jabba the) has put her foxy single days very much behind her (rather like her cellulite), and has Got Her Man.

She has a nice house, adorable children who only annoy her 90 per cent of the time, a large, eccentric and charming family, and an attractive (but increasingly mysterious) husband. And she gets to have regular sex . . . well, ish. Anyway, what the hell, it's only loins . . .

Everyone wants to be married - don't they?

'Made me laugh out loud. Does for divorcees what Bridget Jones's Diary did for singletons' Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph

'Brilliantly funny' Vogue

'A sharp, witty novel . . .. groundbreaking in women's fiction in that it attempts to investigate modern marriage: what it does to women, to their sex drive and their sense of self' Marie Claire

'That rare thing: the lightweight comic novel that is well written, neatly constructed and actually funny' Guardian

'A comic tour de force' Daily Telegraph

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.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 30 OCT 2000

Clara Hutt, 33, speaks for middle-class marital ennui as she reflects on her life, her indifferent husband, Robert, her two lice-ridden young boys, and her "roomy four-bedroomed Victorian terraced" London home and asks, "Is that it, then?" With a sense of humor that ranges from witty and raucous to simpering and mean-spirited, British first-time author Knight relates the ribald story of a modern woman and her quest for happiness. Clara, whose fragmented family consists of a mother who's fond of accumulating ex-husbands, a wealthy but distant father, two spoiled stepsisters and a listless stepbrother, resolves to have a "nuclear" family. After attaining this conventional goal, however, she discovers that marriage is more boring than blissful. The arduous rigmarole of "hoovering," chauffeuring, cooking and compromising leaves Clara unsatisfied. She tends to complain, self-deprecate and obsess on trivialities while comparing herself to her friends: Tamsin, who is single, unburdened and prowling for romance; Stella the "pottery cat," a rustic single mother who bakes her own bread; Naomi, the model housewife who feeds her kids gourmet lunches and manages to keep her home impeccably clean. Simmering with envy, longing for affection (and a little bit of "swooning"), Clara grows restless and seeks solace in the admiring eyes of an unlikely character. Although Knight's lively narrative entertains while animating many of the common misconceptions people have about marriage, the reader should be prepared to suspend belief for the final course of this chatty tale.

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