Slummy Mummy [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Fiona Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2008

The irresistible, laugh-out-loud debut novel hailed as “a literary sensation to rival Bridget Jones.”( Anna Wintour, Vogue)

Lucy Sweeney has three sons, a husband on a short fuse, and a tendency toward domestic disaster. Lucy is living in a constant state of emergency, and the white lies to cover up the trail of “Slummy Mummy” destruction are escalating. When she begins a flirtation with Sexy Domesticated Dad, disaster looms, making it hard for her to remember why she exchanged her career and sanity for this. Pitch-perfect and satisfyingly smart, Slummy Mummy is a hilarious novel about the dilemmas of modern marriage and motherhood for those who never discovered their domestic goddess within.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Neill's humorous novel about a hopelessly disorganized mother constantly getting herself into scrapes would have benefited from abridgment. While talented narrator Kellgren ably conveys Lucy's likability and expertly creates distinctive voices for the other characters, the novel's many similar incidents blur. Lucy constantly finds herself in embarrassingly public situations (her toddler son pees on the leg of a famous actor; she uses a credit card she's reported lost and must deal with the police; she ducks down in her car to avoid being seen by someone and a crowd gathers to find out who abandoned their children in a car). After a while, the repetitive incidents become predictable, and the audiobook's pace becomes tedious. Only on the final disc does the story pick up again, with a hilariously farcical climax that throws all the characters and subplots together. The characters are likable and the story is amusing, but judicious abridging would have made for a brisker, funnier listen.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist

What starts out as a harmless fantasy for Londoner Lucy Sweeney becomes a serious threat to life as she knows it. This barely coping, stay-at-home mother of three starts daydreaming about the father of one of her son's classmates, only to discover that her feelings are reciprocated. She is used to hiding bills, lost keys, and misplaced cars from her husband, not feelings for another man. When Lucy confides in her friends, they are horrified that she is willing to even entertain such a fantasy given how good a husband Tom is. Lucy's life is in constant upheaval with one crisis or another, involving children, her feelings of inferiority compared to the overachieving mothers at school, or her unwanted desire for "Sexy Domesticated Dad." The frazzled life of a full-time mom is comedic fodder for Neill, a London Times Magazine writer, as she offers a funny yet sympathetic and classically British spin on the paradoxes of women's lives. Engelmann, Patty --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (July 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1594483124
• ASIN: B001JQLN78
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,209,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This was written for me!, August 18, 2007

By 

J. A. Davis "jadecat" (Northern Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slummy Mummy (Hardcover)

Finally, a book for all of us "real moms" out there. You know, we're the ones who bring store-bought cookies to the class party instead of making something from scratch (HORRORS), the ones who hastily cut a hole in a sheet and call it a costume, the ones who regularly feed our kids meat (GASP). This is the story of Lucy Sweeney, a stay-at-home mom who leads a perpetually chaotic existence. She loses credit cards, passports, keys to the house - you name it - this woman has fumbled it. Of course, she is married to a super-organized architect whose drawers of underwear are sorted by color. Readers follow Lucy throughout one wild and crazy school year, where many of her antics resemble that of Bridget Jones (another hilarious Brit). There are plenty of flirtations with disaster, including one involving a fellow class parent (whom all the mothers call "Sexy Domesticated Dad"). I love British humor, and Neill certainly showcases plenty of it in this, her debut novel. What makes her writing stand out is that it is extremely intelligent and insightful as she wonderfully describes Lucy, her best friends, as well as some of the uber-moms who are quite puzzled by her - ones I'm sure every reader will recognize in their own school communities. Okay, so some of our heroine's antics are a bit over-the-top, but it's still wicked fun to read!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For the Mom who's part of the "out" crowd, February 24, 2010

By 

Robin (Bethesda, Moldova, Republic of) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slummy Mummy (Paperback)

Slummy Mummy is hilarious--and comforting. Yes, its over the top, but where it really hits the mark is in its descriptions of the parental infighting and can-you-top-this behavior in an upscale suburban neighborhood. This mum's neighborhood happens to be outside London, but it could easily be New York or the suburbs of Washington, DC.

If you are the kind of Mom who finds herself overwhelmed by backpacks filled with "parental contracts," requests that you become an unpaid teacher's assistant not to mention nasty cliquish behavior of some mothers groups--you may end up cheering this book. I know I did.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, smart and funny, September 21, 2007

By 

Katie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slummy Mummy (Hardcover)

You would never expect a piece of mom-lit to turn out as a sophisticated essay about marriage and motherhood. Slummy Mummy comes quite as a surprise, being not only smart, witty and extremely funny, but the most important of all, giving astonishingly precise account of a woman in her midlife crisis. As the heroine's pedantic husband put it, the midlife crisis is "discontent with the status quo, restlessness, questioning decisions that you made years ago, thinking you've grown apart from your husband, wondering whether happiness lies with another man". And Lucy Sweeney makes a long way from fantasizing about another man to making a decision about the future of her marriage.

The book is not dedicated exclusively to adultery. Ms.Neill provides amazing observations about the nature of being a mother, about the responsibilities, difficulties and rewards of motherhood. Lucy's life is a nightmare of sleepless nights, chronic fatigue and endless flow of domestic routine, and yet there's a rare sparkle of such overwhelming feeling that may only be felt towards a child.

..."I feel time passing like sand slipping through my fingers. Perhaps it is good that we remember only fragments of their childhood as we grow older. Otherwise, the loss would be too great to bear."...

Lucy's fears, worries, anxiety, loneliness and exhaustion are not her own. It all sounds so utterly familiar, as if someone overheard your own thoughts and shared your own experience. And yet, the Slummy Mummy does not hold a tiny bit of depression. As if Lucy Sweeney pondered on one of the big-sized dilemmas of her life "To laugh or to cry" and finally voted for the former.