How to Kill Your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints) by Kathy Lette
| How to Kill Your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints) by Kathy Lette | |
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| Category: Women's Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Kerry King
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| Summary: Kathy Lette is churning them out in happy succession. Light and easy to read, occasionally funny, but tries a bit too hard. | |
| Buy? No | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 336 | Date: February 2007 |
| Publisher: Pocket Books | |
| ISBN: 978-0743468763 | |
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I don't believe Kathy Lette ever surpassed her first novel, Foetal Attraction which was published way back in 1994. It was roaringly funny. Everything she has published since has been like an exercise in warring siblings who can never quite be as clever, funny, charming or thoughtful as that loathed eldest child. How To Kill Your Husband comes under that unfortunate banner. The best part about reading it was the looks I received whilst perusing its pages on the tube. Especially whilst seated next to my husband!
Jazz Jardine is a stay at home mum; actually, she's not really the true definition of a stay at home mum in my view, she lives in a multi-million pound house with her surgeon husband and has a designer label loo brush. Anyway, I digress; Cassie is a working mother, tortured by her job as a primary school teacher and the distinct lack of promotion to deputy head that she so richly deserves, and who is also a doormat, a dogsbody and an all round serf for husband Rory - the local vet - and her two diabolical children. Hannah is a childless career woman, married to an arty type fifteen years her junior, superior, aloof and apparently colder than Saturn.
Have we set the scene? It seems then that we have three archetypal nothing-whatsoever-in-common friends who find themselves giving colour to the background and providing the prequel part of the story to Jazz's sudden arrest for the murder of her husband.
Frustratingly, this book could have been really, really good. Kathy has fallen on her quill in as far as she has lazily used every marital gag in the book.
Cassie, here's a novel idea. You could initiate sex now and again - and try different things. Couples do swap positions occasionally you know.
Yes, let's swap positions. You stand by the sink washing up and I'll lie on the couch farting and watching the footie...
Whilst I am sure that every so often someone in the world may utter these words, I was hoping for something fresher. Something less Germaine Greer circa 1979. This book tends to assume that all women fit into a stereotype and in fact, many women don't. And neither do most men for that matter.
That said, the story itself, without the laboured content and padding and jokes so old that they belong in the Natural History Museum, is a good one. I like the idea that someone you never imagined capable of such a thing could be arrested for murder. And I like, even if it is mostly somewhat clichéd, the journey of self-discovery Jazz takes prior to her arrest. So it wasn't all bad.
In all, I wouldn't recommend you buy this book, but borrow from the library or a friend (as I did) and you won't find it is a complete waste. Still, if your reading hours are limited, give it a miss and read something more worthy of your time.
Read this if you like books that require no effort and cause no internal turmoil, for instance, The Three Day Rule by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees or perhaps you fancy a chuckle, in which case Lucy Diamond's Any Way You Want Me might appeal and certainly give Notting Hell a run for its money which is, frankly, streets better.
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You can read more book reviews or buy How to Kill Your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints) by Kathy Lette at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy How to Kill Your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints) by Kathy Lette at Amazon.com.
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