Mrs. Fytton's Country Life

Why can't more books be this funny, well-written and wise? I, who read at every available moment, and have a stack of good books waiting to be read, actually savored Mrs Fytton's Country Life twice. Please, please read this book if you need a fine laugh. Read it twice, in fact.

Mavis Cheek is to "women's fiction" (for lack of a better term) what Janet Evanovich is to mystery. This is one of the wittiest, brightest, funniest books I have read in a long, long time.With quiet, droll but absolutely side-splitting humor, Cheeks, a shining star if there ever was one, tells the tired old cliched story of a first wife whose husband has left her for a younger, blonder, bimbette. And after all those years of devotion, too! Before you groan aloud and stop reading this review, believe me when I tell you that this is NOT the ordinary tale!Angela Fytton, the spurned wife, is not one to take rejection quietly, and is not above casting aspersions on her (ex)-husbands er...manly equipment to wifey number two. Angela embarks on a diabolical plan to get her husband back. Part 1: Buy a huge, rambling house in the country that doubles as historic artifact. Start making one's own honey and talking to the hens (whom she threatens with coq au vin recipes if they don't behave). Part 2: Send one's obnoxious teenaged children (boy and girl) to live with Daddy and Bimbette and New Baby Brother. Part 3: Well...you have to read the book.Does Angela get her husband back? Does Binnie the Bimbette (yes, Binnie) survive her predecessor's truly outrageous onslaught? Will the baby survive his teenaged siblings? Will Ian the ex-husband survive both wife number one and wife number two without resorting to bondage (one of the shortest but funniest paragraphs I have yet to read)?Read it and find out...and rejoice that there is a wildly funny British wit on the loose! I was thrilled to find that Cheek has written [other] novels, and plan to investigate her other books as soon as possible.

I travel annually to the U.K with my husband (he is British i am American) and I often go to the book shops and buy a suitcase full of books to take home. Mrs. Fytton's is the last of the run from my last trip and it is a fine read! Mrs. Fytton the first spends her early days as the queen of the household mother, business woman, wife, interior decorator, bon vivant a veritable whirlwind of activity. Just a little Martha stewart crossed with a dose of Delia Smith and just a dash of Erica jong. By keeping up the smooth external veneer of a woman firmly in love with the idea of woman's liberation whilst secretly harboring a desire to please her man at all costs she loses her husband to a "younger blonder model". For revenge she leaves London, dumps her two teenage children off with her ex, his new wife and their new child and moves lock stock and pickling jar to the country to become a domestic goddess and win back the heart of her former husband. I have found myself on numerous occassions chuckling out loud on my commute on the train at the eccentricities of Mrs Fytton's neighbours. I love Mavis' style and will look for one of her other novels to read in the future.