A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Product Information

It was interesting and entertaining to read about the family's struggles, slowly becoming bigger throughout the novel. It's squarely and unashamedly aimed at middle aged women, it's full of stereotyped characters and irritating text-speak, has a plot that's largely predictable from the blurb alone, and a "twist" that's both obvious and pointless. In her career spanning three decades, she has been nominated for six BAFTA Awards and also won a Fellowship BAFTA along with her best friend Jennifer Saunders.

She is fed up with her life that is the same, day in day out, she is a wife and mother to two teenagers, Dora who is seventeen and has self-esteem problems and holds her mum responsible for everything going wrong in her life and Peter who truly believes he is Oscar Wilde, his hero. There’s a completely different set up and mood created in each character’s diary entry so it’s all really enjoyable. The only character I found enteraining to read from was Oscar and even he got old after several long chapters.Well it does happen (don’t worry) but you will have to stay focused on the book and not give it up because I have seen some bad reviews and I wonder why people didn’t get to the real depth of the book. It’s a given with him, mandatory, if there’s a pretty girl and she shows any interest at all in him, he is helpless. Fun, irreverent and there are even recipes in the back, A Tiny Bit Marvellous is, well, a tiny bit marvellous. However, Mo is somewhat lost, unsure of who she is as she faces this milestone of a birthday and is about to do something particularly foolish that will surely mean consequences for all her family. When I won this novel courtesy of Mel’s Random Reviews I was thrilled and took in away with me on my recent holiday looking for a laugh or two.

I can't wait till her next book, dawn once again proves herself to be a brilliant, funny, clever lady who really knows what she is talking about! I love Dawn French anyway and had heard the great reviews, so I just knew I was going to love it, and I did.

There were some amusing bits, and there were a few other redeeming little titbits, which is why this just about squeezes two stars. I also found it a shame that Dawn relies on the use of modern life references such as X Factor and Facebook throughout which will surely date this book quite quickly.

It could easily be condensed into half it's size by narrowing the margins and reducing the font size, (hello? I'd recommend it to any teens who want to understand their parents, any parents who want to understand their teens, or anyone who wants an easy going read with some laughs but also real heart. And whilst others have become irritated by the writing styles, and particularly that used for Dora, I think it fits together quite well. I thought the characterisation of these characters was excelent and I ended up really caring about them. The text-speak, repetitive swearing language style gets a bit wearing after a while and more than once I found myself wanting to clip Dora round the ear and tell her to stop being such a cow, shake Mo for being totally unaware of what her family was going through and instead, fixating on a hopeless romance.She is ripe for the attention of an unscrupulous younger man who offers excitement and adventure that her mild husband doesn’t. Her husband whose inner self we see little of as, well he's just 'Dad', then there is Dora, a foul mouthed, self-obsessed seventeen-going-on-thirty-year-old and her divinely camp-over-the-top brother with a kind heart and damaged psyche who rechristens himself Oscar.