The More You Ignore Me: A Novel

by Jo Brand

Overview

“Seriously Funny.”
—The Mirror (UK) Book of the Week

 

The funniest and most original import from Britain since Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Jo Brand’s The More You Ignore Me manages to be both poignant and darkly comic at the same time. Actress and comedienne Brand—well known to viewers in the States from her work in Absolutely Fabulous—delivers an outrageous coming-of-age story in the tradition of the Adrian Mole novels, full of dysfunctional family life and celebrity obsession in the 1980s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061973581
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Pages:	309
Product dimensions:	8.02(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

A former psychiatric nurse, stand-up comic Jo Brand has a large following throughout the UK. Her TV series Through the Cakehole and All the Way to Worcester met with great acclaim, and in 2003 she was listed in The Observer as one of the fifty funniest acts in British comedy. She is currently cowriting and starring in the BBC Four sitcom Getting On. Brand has written three novels and two humor books, is married with two children, and lives in South London.

Editorial Reviews

Brand’s (It’s Different for Girls) latest lacks focus as she alternates between the voices of a devoted husband, Keith, his schizophrenic wife, Gina, and their daughter, Alice. The story, set in a small English town, is best served when Alice dispels her concerns about the psychiatric illness that has left her mother, Gina, in a medicated fog throughout most of Alice’s young life. Alice’s voice is the most poignant and fleshed out, and she lends a certain charm to the tale, as does the clever twist of Alice’s obsession with musician Morrissey, who first hit the music charts with his band the Smiths in the early ’80s when Alice was a young teen. Her somber existence is mimicked in his music, which gives a solid sense of the period and Alice’s thoughts. Alice’s path provides an interesting insight into how a child deals with a parent’s mental illness, but the book as a whole misses the mark, pulling in too many directions. And the introduction of Gina’s family, an uneducated country bumpkin clan, only adds to the confusion. (June)

Publishers Weekly

The farce always blends with sorrow, and the sense of cartoon families everywhere makes for touching sitcom drama.” — Booklist

“interesting, and quirky, and worth your time” — www.advicesistersblog.blogspot.com

From the Publisher

The farce always blends with sorrow, and the sense of cartoon families everywhere makes for touching sitcom drama.

Booklist

interesting, and quirky, and worth your time

www.advicesistersblog.blogspot.com

The farce always blends with sorrow, and the sense of cartoon families everywhere makes for touching sitcom drama.

Booklist

interesting, and quirky, and worth your time

advicesistersblog.blogspot.com