Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 22 March 2012.
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year is a funny and touching novel about what happens when someone refuses to be the person everyone expects them to be. Sue Townsend, Britain's funniest writer for over three decades, has written a brilliant novel that hilariously deconstructs modern family life.
Please note that this title is also available as an unabridged audiobook narrated by Caroline Quentin. Click here to find out more.
The day her twins leave home, Eva climbs into bed and stays there. For seventeen years she's wanted to yell at the world, 'Stop! I want to get off'. Finally, this is her chance.
Her husband Brian, an astronomer having an unsatisfactory affair, is upset. Who will cook his dinner? Eva, he complains, is attention seeking. But word of Eva's defiance spreads.
Legions of fans, believing she is protesting, gather in the street. While her new friend Alexander the white van man brings tea, toast and an unexpected sympathy. And from this odd but comforting place Eva begins to see both herself and the world very, very differently. . .
'Proof, once more, that Townsend is one of the funniest writers around' The Times
'Townsend's wit is razor-sharp' Daily Mirror
Author
About Sue Townsend
Sue Townsend is the creator of Britain's best loved and bestselling diarist, Adrian Mole. She was born in Leicester in 1946, is married and has four children and five grandchildren and still lives in Leicester. She left school at fifteen and was employed in series of unskilled jobs. By her 18th birthday she was married, and a year later had her first baby. In 1978 she joined a Writers Group at the Phoenix Art Centre in Leicester and her career as an author and playwright took off from there. Her first play, Womberang, won its author a Thames Television Bursary as Writer in Residence.
Her book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2 and its sequel, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole were both number one bestsellers and made Sue Townsend the bestselling novelist of the 1980s. In 1991 came a third volume: Adrian Mole from Minor to Major, in 1993 Adrian Mole - The Wilderness Years and in 1999 Adrian Mole: the Cappuccino Years. Together the Mole diaries have sold over 8 million copies, have been adapted for radio, television, theatre and been translated into 34 languages. Her other novels include Rebuilding Coventry (1988), The Queen and I (1992) and Ghost Children (1998). A collection of her monthly columns for Sainsbury's Magazine was published in 2001 entitled Public Confessions of a Middle-aged Woman Aged 55 3/4.
