Sophie Hamilton and her husband Leo have a fairly marvellous life - house in the country, flat in town for City worker Leo, fancy cars, a yacht (!), three lovely-ish kids, Labrador (of course), "kitchen sups" with friends. (Once I started seeing Sophie as Samantha Cameron, I couldn't quite shake it. I think it was the kitchen sups.)
Every Christmas Sophie sends one of those round-robin letters to all her friends and acquaintances, notifying them about all her family's marvellous achievements over the past year. It's a bit of a shock when someone starts returning these to sender, scrawled over first with "Smug Bitch", then with allegations that Leo is having an affair and about to leave her. Sophie's pretty sure she isn't smug (though actually, she is) but she's not so sure about the affair, and when she thinks she's found concrete evidence, something happens which causes her life to quickly and dramatically unravel...
The tone of this felt different to me from Laura Wilson's other books. There's not a great deal of mystery here as the plot mainly concerns Sophie's attempts to cover up what has happened - which rapidly becomes a black comedy of errors as she makes a series of fairly terrible decisions and misjudgements and pretty much everything that can go wrong, does. She remarks herself at one point that things are becoming farcical, and they are. You have to keep reading, just to see how much worse things can possibly get (quite a lot) and find out where on earth it's all going to end up.
It's hard to relate all that much to Sophie - she *is* smug and self-absorbed, at least to begin with, and she *does* take her extremely privileged life for granted (at one point thinking to herself in bewilderment, "I'm Sophie. I'm supposed to have a nice life.") Having experienced an insecure childhood, she often seems more concerned with the potential loss of her lifestyle and social standing than anything else and is prepared to go to quite some lengths to protect it.
There are a few twists in the tale, but not a huge amount of mystery (I guessed the identity of the "other woman" seconds before it was revealed - and I'm still pondering this aspect of the novel).
Laura Wilson is an excellent writer who always delivers a great read and this is no exception, darkly comic, cleverly constructed and a very engaging read - even if I didn't really like any of the characters! Ultimately, I was left unsure quite what to make of it all.... But that's OK.
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