Book 2 - A Tiny Bit Marvellous (Dawn French)

'My mother is, like, a totally confirmed A-list bloody cocking minging arsehole cretin cockhead of the highest order. Fact.' With an opening line like that, it's hard not to love. 'A Tiny Bit Marvellous' is Dawn French's first work of fiction, and hopefully not her last.(333 pages)

Retails for $32.95 AU

The book follows the lives of a family known as The Battles. The line on the back of the book sums it up pretty well: 'Everyone hates the perfect family, so you'll love the Battles'. It's written in the form of diary entries, but without dates, from the perspective of Mo, a child psychologist who doesn't understand her own children, Dora, who's about to hit 18 and is blissfully unaware of everything good in her life, and Peter/Oscar who can only be described as. Different. And there's also dad, but he's just there. 


A highly hilarious book, that had me in stitches most of the time I spent reading it. Over the course of the book there's many family relationships that are patched up, from people seeing their own mistakes. Mo is on the brink of turning 50, and almost falls into the trap of having an affair. Dora, is a highly ignorant teenager, almost 18, and all she really wants is some TLC. Peter/Oscar is a highly sophisticated young man, in the middle of his teen years. 


I'm not sure what I thought the book was going to be like, I knew it was going to be funny, but not this good. I really love this book, my favourite characters to read the accounts of were Dora and Mo, but Oscar was highly entertaining too. It features many references to today's pop-culture, talking about Twilight, Facebook and Bear Grylls, and for now, it makes sense, maybe not so much in 60 years when today's 'pop-culture' is a thing of the past. I really love this book, and really do hope it's adapted to a movie sometime in the near future! 

Time Spent Reading: 6.2 Hours.
Enjoyment Rating: 10/10
Overall Rating: 10/10
Genre: Comedy

'Oh, and there's a dog called Poo'

Alyssa.x