My Life on a Plate

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Greeted with considerable attention and stellar early reviews in the United Kingdom, this irresistible best-selling novel lifts the lid on what happens after Happily Ever After. The Sunday Times called MY LIFE ON A PLATE "disturbingly funny," the Guardian called it "exemplary," and the Evening Standard published excerpts every day for a week. MY LIFE ON A PLATE introduces thirty-three-year-old Clara Hutt: irreverent, sometimes unkind, always self-deprecating. Clara is a part-time magazine writer with a perpetually mysterious husband and two small boys, and some days she wakes up with the feeling that her life isn't all it should be. Her extended stepfamily is forever making demands; her sons are constantly "murdering each other"; all the other mothers at the school gate are perfectly groomed, but Clara is in her pajama bottoms and her husband's sweater. With razor-sharp wit and a healthy dose of insight into married life, India Knight takes readers on a continually entertaining ride through one woman's bumpy search for fulfillment.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

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. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

"India Knight's wildly funny survey of women's lives will leave you nodding in recognition and laughing out loud." --Regina Barreca

Library Journal

Knight, whose weekly London Sunday Times columns are filled with wry social commentary, has joined the Bridget Jones school of novelists. With less-than-perfect grace, our heroine, Clara Hutt, is dealing with the mini-traumas of married life, including juggling freelance writing and parenting. Beset with a domineering but oh-so-chic mother, ditzy stepsisters, befuddled friends, and a mostly absent husband, Clara worries about her weight, the slide of her wardrobe from elegance to comfort, marital infidelity, and recovering from a disastrous interview in which she managed not only to insult an up-and-coming dance star but also to give him head lice. Despite her self-doubts, Clara proves to have sufficient resiliency to deal with the end of her marriage and the beginning of a new relationship. The witty commentary on middle-class mores and humor make this slight novel an enjoyable read and saves it from being simply a clone. Recommended for public libraries.--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Julia Dahl - Redbook

In her hilarious new novel, My Life on a Plate, India Knight blows the lid off the myth of domestic bliss, yet we never doubt that her heroine's adventures on the fringes of family life will end in triumph.

Kirkus Reviews

An enormously charming, often scabrously funny first novel by English columnist Knight, who takes a vivacious approach to a once-happily-married woman beset with weighty issues—and two lively wee boys. Eight years into her marriage, Clara has a sinking feeling that something isn't right. It isn't her kids; she loves them to pieces, even though their needs make mincemeat of her freelance writing schedule. It isn't her friends, although one has just gotten pregnant from a one-night stand and another's husband has started an affair with one of his office help. It isn't her imperious, magnificently packaged mother, about to be wed for the fourth time. It isn't even her disastrous interview with a rising star in the dance world, an Irishman she mortally offended by calling him a "poof." No, it has everything to do with the dashing and impeccable, aloof and workaholic Robert: her husband. While they're kind and loving toward each other, Clara doesn't get the feeling that they're in love anymore—and it doesn't help that she's putting on pounds worrying about it. She wants romance back in her life, and as a way of getting it decides to attend a dinner she's been invited to by the Irish dancer, who inexplicably seems to have forgiven her and wants her there to celebrate his triumph on the London stage. She makes a stunning entrance, wowing Robert and the other men in the room, and while she awakens the next morning with the mother of all hangovers, hope is in the air. She and Robert go to Paris alone for a weekend, but Clara's vision of how it will go proves faulty at best, even though, in the end, she gets what she wished for. The irrepressible Clara is also irresistible: asshedeconstructs and reconstructs herself endlessly, there are insights aplenty about making do, holding on, and letting go. Lyons, Richard DIVISIBLE BY ONE Van Neste(12836 Ashtree Rd., Midlothian, VA 23113) (152 pp.) Jan. 2001