Constance is a very proper, middle-aged, contemporary upper-class British lady with a lawyer husband named Jeffrey and two grown children, Sophie and Rupert. She lives in a charming English village. She has a gardener and a cook/housemaid. She is a bell ringer in her church and is on the flower committee. She wears sensible shoes. She has definite opinions of how life should be lived.
She decides to write an anonymous blog for a year. Life happens, affecting her children, her husband, her friends and, of course, Connie herself. It's funny, sweet and entertaining...like some of Meryl Streep's movies.
At one point, Constance has to retrieve her wayward daughter from Ibiza:
"The combined effects of the heat and the emotional stress gave me such a terrible headache that I had to raid the bathroom cabinet for some pills. They perked me up so much that I soon felt like taking a brisk stroll to get some fresh air, and I ended up walking the length of the bay and back fourteen times....Blotting out the near-naked revelers and the ghastly, thundering, monotonous music, the natural beauty of the scene made me feel strangely euphoric...I nursed Sophie back to health, attempting to cook wholesome food in her tiny, dark kitchen, which was stocked with nothing more than a box of stale Frosties and a bottle of ketchup...As soon as Sophie was better, I booked our flights and here we are. Fortunately, she had to remove her tongue stud to pass through the metal detector in the airport."
"Last night I went to the Hilton bar, alone. I realize that in usual circumstances a woman should not drink by herself, but I think the fact that after thirty-three years of marriage my husband has abandoned me in favor of a herd of cattle should be taken as a mitigating factor. The bar in question is very plush, with dark oak fittings, a sweeping view across the city and no men in baggy T-shirts eating crisps in dark corners."
If you like Alexander McCall Smith's books, you'll like this one. He calls it: "Wonderfully amusing...a comic gem."
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