The Undomestic Goddess – Sophie Kinsella
I'll start by saying I really enjoyed this. I feel I have to say that because I know I'm going to start with a long ramble and if anyone were to stop halfway through they might otherwise get the wrong idea.
To begin with, I found this book quite hard to read. Not because of the writing, of course, but once I got to the point where the main character Samantha's world falls apart because of a piece of paper left unnoticed on her desk … well, that touched a nerve. I'm not very organized myself, and was always getting in trouble at school because I simply couldn't remember to, for example, pack the right books in my bag every day, do the right homework, or collect the report card I was given for not doing those things from the teacher at the end of every lesson. In the end I solved the book problem by carrying all my books to school every day, whether I needed them or not, and ignoring the people who teased me for bringing the wrong books in. No problem is so big it can't simply be avoided.
So I was paranoid that as soon as I got a proper job – if I ever managed to get a proper job – I'd be fired for losing a key document or forgetting to turn up to a meeting. When I did get a proper job, as a civil servant, that fear drove me to develop the most anal systems to make this less likely to happen. No problem is so big it can't simply be avoided. As a result, bizarrely, I developed a reputation in the team for being well-organized and being able instantly to put my hand to any document I was asked for (filing systems … good preparation for my current work in software). Of course, I refused to lend anyone the document they asked for – I had to take it myself to the photocopier, give them the copy, then file the original again – otherwise I couldn't guarantee not losing it.
So when I read about Samantha's world exploding because she mislays a document on her desk and forgets to file it before the required date (and as a result loses the client 50 million pounds), my brain is shouting at me. Any system where a mistake like that can have any consequences at all is rubbish. People should be allowed, no, expected to make mistakes like that. There should be systems, checks. If that happens and someone loses 50 million, EVERYONE should be fired. Aargh. Rant over.
Then and only then I got to the chapter where she accidentally gets a job as a housekeeper. With the best will in the world, I couldn't find that chapter entirely believable. (Although, they say, you get one “gotcha” for free in any novel, and I knew that was this book's. You just have to say, let's just accept this and see what happens).
To make this worse, the reason I had so much time to read this was that I've been ill all week – cold and tonsilitis – ill enough that I couldn't manage to do anything beyond working and reading. And here's me, stressed about work, and ill, and reading about a woman so stressed about work that she has a nervous breakdown. What timing.
At this point, after seven chapters, I was really struggling. But fortunately I know several people who really rate this book (or at least who own it), and I've liked the other Sophie Kinsellas I've read, so I felt I should persevere. I figured at this point that the heart of the book was about this woman having to adapt to being a “domestic”, to doing all the ordinary house-y things that she never had time to do before; about the humour of this brilliant woman being all at sea, and presumably using her brilliance to simply avoid (i.e., work around) the problems she can't deal with. That being the case, I thought, why didn't the book just start with her waking up in her room the day after she arrives, and why did she have to keep contacting people at work? But I was wrong, wrong about what this book was about, and it's just as well I kept on reading.
For a while you get her being rubbish in the kitchen (some of it stuff anyone really ought to know, although given her background in the book, her complete and utter domestic incompetence is entirely credible). Then you get her starting to learn, and forming a new and totally different kind of romantic relationship (i.e., with someone who isn't a lawyer who charges their time in six-minute slots – again, aargh, I absolutely loathe timesheets and mine are only in half hours, and on a good week I can just book five days to the same thing). I remember with surprise seeing I was on page 191, half way through the book, and feeling I'd only just got started with the funny domestic stuff and being disappointed that there wasn't going to be enough of it.
And then Samantha comes back into the orbit of her old job again, when she realizes that there's more to her departure than she thought, and that she may have been used as part of a fraud by her old boss. At which the book changes again, into a story of legal intrigue. Great fun, and by this point I was already hooked. Finally, totally exhonerated and offered not just her old job back but a fantastic dream job (I didn't believe that, but who cares), she has to choose between the career she always wanted and a getting a real life, and after yet more twists and turns – when I thought everything was sown up – the book finally reaches a happy ending.
In the end, this book had loads of really brilliant things in it. It was funny (“Six minutes isn't sex. Six minutes is boiling an egg.”) Romantic (same bit. And the bit with the bread). And thought-provoking.
More than anything, this book is about the question of work-life balance, and there are few more important issues today than that. It also touches on some of the issues particular to women in work – when Sam is berated as a Judas by feminists for giving up her high-powered city job to work as a housekeeper and saying that she's actually happier like that. (Note: that's very much not the message this book is giving.)
There's also the whole question of parental and personal pressure to “be all you can be”, to make the most of the gifts and talents you have. That's a really hard one, and one I really struggle with myself. I believe that with ability comes responsibility, to put it to good use, but how far should that go? Is there a balance to be struck between making the most of your God-given talents and actually having a life as well? And how do I deal with that with my own children, who are both outstanding / exceptional / egregious in their own little ways? (As, I believe, is everyone – we can all be superheros, but I won't go into that one here). Significantly, although Samantha's mother in paricular is a major presence in the book, she never actually appears in person – she's always too busy.
I loved the way that people and relationships in the book are never simple (just like in real life). Arnold, the kind boss, turns out to be a fraudster who stitches her up. Guy, the star-crossed love she never quite got it together with, goes from Mr. Nice to Mr. Evil and back (in fact he gets arguably the most jaw-dropping, add-extra-dimension-of-complexity moment in the book), but in reality turns out to be a bit of both. The lawyers generally are not portrayed as evil, simply as people living in such blinkered little boxes that they cannot see the world outside. And I loved the way that Samantha goes crawling to Kellerman, who she absolutely does not get on with, in the knowledge that he at least will know to treat her professionally. In some way I can't quite explain there was something almost Jesus-like in that. Philippians 2:5-11?
In summary, this book wasn't quite what I expected, but it was better.
To begin with, I found this book quite hard to read. Not because of the writing, of course, but once I got to the point where the main character Samantha's world falls apart because of a piece of paper left unnoticed on her desk … well, that touched a nerve. I'm not very organized myself, and was always getting in trouble at school because I simply couldn't remember to, for example, pack the right books in my bag every day, do the right homework, or collect the report card I was given for not doing those things from the teacher at the end of every lesson. In the end I solved the book problem by carrying all my books to school every day, whether I needed them or not, and ignoring the people who teased me for bringing the wrong books in. No problem is so big it can't simply be avoided.
So I was paranoid that as soon as I got a proper job – if I ever managed to get a proper job – I'd be fired for losing a key document or forgetting to turn up to a meeting. When I did get a proper job, as a civil servant, that fear drove me to develop the most anal systems to make this less likely to happen. No problem is so big it can't simply be avoided. As a result, bizarrely, I developed a reputation in the team for being well-organized and being able instantly to put my hand to any document I was asked for (filing systems … good preparation for my current work in software). Of course, I refused to lend anyone the document they asked for – I had to take it myself to the photocopier, give them the copy, then file the original again – otherwise I couldn't guarantee not losing it.
So when I read about Samantha's world exploding because she mislays a document on her desk and forgets to file it before the required date (and as a result loses the client 50 million pounds), my brain is shouting at me. Any system where a mistake like that can have any consequences at all is rubbish. People should be allowed, no, expected to make mistakes like that. There should be systems, checks. If that happens and someone loses 50 million, EVERYONE should be fired. Aargh. Rant over.
Then and only then I got to the chapter where she accidentally gets a job as a housekeeper. With the best will in the world, I couldn't find that chapter entirely believable. (Although, they say, you get one “gotcha” for free in any novel, and I knew that was this book's. You just have to say, let's just accept this and see what happens).
To make this worse, the reason I had so much time to read this was that I've been ill all week – cold and tonsilitis – ill enough that I couldn't manage to do anything beyond working and reading. And here's me, stressed about work, and ill, and reading about a woman so stressed about work that she has a nervous breakdown. What timing.
At this point, after seven chapters, I was really struggling. But fortunately I know several people who really rate this book (or at least who own it), and I've liked the other Sophie Kinsellas I've read, so I felt I should persevere. I figured at this point that the heart of the book was about this woman having to adapt to being a “domestic”, to doing all the ordinary house-y things that she never had time to do before; about the humour of this brilliant woman being all at sea, and presumably using her brilliance to simply avoid (i.e., work around) the problems she can't deal with. That being the case, I thought, why didn't the book just start with her waking up in her room the day after she arrives, and why did she have to keep contacting people at work? But I was wrong, wrong about what this book was about, and it's just as well I kept on reading.
For a while you get her being rubbish in the kitchen (some of it stuff anyone really ought to know, although given her background in the book, her complete and utter domestic incompetence is entirely credible). Then you get her starting to learn, and forming a new and totally different kind of romantic relationship (i.e., with someone who isn't a lawyer who charges their time in six-minute slots – again, aargh, I absolutely loathe timesheets and mine are only in half hours, and on a good week I can just book five days to the same thing). I remember with surprise seeing I was on page 191, half way through the book, and feeling I'd only just got started with the funny domestic stuff and being disappointed that there wasn't going to be enough of it.
And then Samantha comes back into the orbit of her old job again, when she realizes that there's more to her departure than she thought, and that she may have been used as part of a fraud by her old boss. At which the book changes again, into a story of legal intrigue. Great fun, and by this point I was already hooked. Finally, totally exhonerated and offered not just her old job back but a fantastic dream job (I didn't believe that, but who cares), she has to choose between the career she always wanted and a getting a real life, and after yet more twists and turns – when I thought everything was sown up – the book finally reaches a happy ending.
In the end, this book had loads of really brilliant things in it. It was funny (“Six minutes isn't sex. Six minutes is boiling an egg.”) Romantic (same bit. And the bit with the bread). And thought-provoking.
More than anything, this book is about the question of work-life balance, and there are few more important issues today than that. It also touches on some of the issues particular to women in work – when Sam is berated as a Judas by feminists for giving up her high-powered city job to work as a housekeeper and saying that she's actually happier like that. (Note: that's very much not the message this book is giving.)
There's also the whole question of parental and personal pressure to “be all you can be”, to make the most of the gifts and talents you have. That's a really hard one, and one I really struggle with myself. I believe that with ability comes responsibility, to put it to good use, but how far should that go? Is there a balance to be struck between making the most of your God-given talents and actually having a life as well? And how do I deal with that with my own children, who are both outstanding / exceptional / egregious in their own little ways? (As, I believe, is everyone – we can all be superheros, but I won't go into that one here). Significantly, although Samantha's mother in paricular is a major presence in the book, she never actually appears in person – she's always too busy.
I loved the way that people and relationships in the book are never simple (just like in real life). Arnold, the kind boss, turns out to be a fraudster who stitches her up. Guy, the star-crossed love she never quite got it together with, goes from Mr. Nice to Mr. Evil and back (in fact he gets arguably the most jaw-dropping, add-extra-dimension-of-complexity moment in the book), but in reality turns out to be a bit of both. The lawyers generally are not portrayed as evil, simply as people living in such blinkered little boxes that they cannot see the world outside. And I loved the way that Samantha goes crawling to Kellerman, who she absolutely does not get on with, in the knowledge that he at least will know to treat her professionally. In some way I can't quite explain there was something almost Jesus-like in that. Philippians 2:5-11?
In summary, this book wasn't quite what I expected, but it was better.
Labels: Reading
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