Passing Go by Libby Purves

Passing Go

Libby Purves

Throw a dysfunctional London family, initial millennium optimism and a huge pinch of humour into a bag - and this book is the result! Highly entertaining yet thought provoking.

Extract
The tenth of January, 2000, began as an ordinary day. The dull plastic sky, the school run traffic hooting in the road outside, the bathroom mirror itself - Helen's choice, with its irritating artful overpriced driftwood frame - were exactly the same as they had been the millennium night. Nothing twenty-first century about them, nothing at all. Well, obviously not! An irritated upward flick propelled foam into his eye, and Roy grabbed blindly for the towel... His eye clear, he looked with disfavour at the pale fluffy towel - Helen's taste again, with a maddeningly priggish, New Agey label bragging about unbleached cotton and natural dyes. Deliberately, he dropped it on the floor. Nothing, was different.
Parallels
  • Summer Things by Joseph Connolly
  • Gorleston by Henry Sutton
  • Diary of a Househusband by Carl Peters