A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Product Information

There’s seventeen-year-old Dora, a stroppy teenager who’s just come out of her first relationship (it lasted a whole six weeks) and who’s longing to escape to university; her long-suffering mother, Mo, a child psychiatrist who’s baffled by the antagonist behaviour of her children; and sixteen-year-old Peter, who prefers to be known as Oscar due to his obsession with Oscar Wilde.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. She is best-known for starring in and writing her comedy sketch show, French and Saunders, alongside her comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and for playing the lead role of Geraldine Granger in the sitcom The Vicar of Dibley. I bought this book because it's by Dawn French, whom I love, and the title made it sound like it could well be a tiny bit marvellous. Told in alternating diary entries, the novel features entries from Mo, the mother turning fifty years old; daughter Dora, turning eighteen; and Oscar, the sixteen year old son whose birth name is Peter but he much prefers Oscar as an homage to his hero Oscar Wilde.Dawn has certainly captured the angsty, hormone-raging, USA-influenced speech of modern teenagers, which I found to be witty, at times rude and disrespectful, and worrying.

Others have documented the style: it's a sort of modern take on the epistolary form, with different characters narrating each chapter in the first-person. I didn't manage to read the whole thing, because I just couldn't cope with the exaggeration of teen Dora and the not-so-believeable Mo.

Thinking it looked like something I'd like, I picked it up for a couple of pennies at a carboot sale and started to read it almost straight away. Mo’s daughter, Dora, is about to turn eighteen, and is planning to head off to university, although writing her UCAS personal statement leaves a lot to be desired. Mo's story is the driving force behind the plot, but with it we are allowed to revel in the day-to-day activities of her children.