Camberwell Beauty is the story of Anna, a butter-side-up sort of woman; Anna's neighbour Jo, the kind of woman who can ask for a pound of sausages without the butcher smirking; their sons and daughters — nancy-boy Jed, snivelling Henry, prepubescent überbitch Georgina and fat Pandora; Jo's husband Nigel, a terrible one for casual sex; and Anna's husband 'good old Chris', the worm that turns.
From ageing to in-laws, affairs to weight problems, Jenny Eclair's debut novel brilliantly dissects the problems of urban living. Problems like...
having an affair: how does one explain bristle-marks on the
bum to one's husband? "Oh sorry darling, I must have sat on a hedgehog"?
in-laws: if you wanted to marry your mother, then you should
have looked for some 15-stone amphibian with facial warts and pants that
smell of old cabbage
the future: there was something rather appealing about widowhood. Those Scottish ones on the telly adverts seemed to have a fantastic time, smirking round hedgerows in hooded capes, looking for all the world like they were off to **** the gardener in the orangery
ageing: when he married her, she looked like Brigitte Bardot and twenty years on she's still a ringer for her - which if you've seen any pictures of Brigitte in the last ten years is not altogether a good thing.
feminism: the next generation won't bother. They'll revert back to being wives and mothers and lying on the sofa every afternoon watching Bette Davis films and eating chocolate gingers, if they've got any sense.
your child's weight: the lady doctor said "My, you're a strapping lass, aren't you?" Like it was no bad thing and with any luck she'd be playing rugby for her country in the not-too-distant future.
urban peril: Carlene didn't know that people still got milk delivered. The last milkman round their way had got stabbed over his yoghurt money, and that put a stop to that
life: attractive people tend to get off the hook, don't they? Good looks are a sort of alibi; it's the thick and ugly that get caught.