Happy birthday and all that - Rebecca Smith

'So here was Posy, a dumpy Ingrid Bergman, plodding through Portswood in her hat. When she was little she had loved watching old musicals. She had hoped that when she grew up life would be like that, a long romance where everybody suddenly burst out singing. There would be neat little dances, and somehow everybody would know all the words.' Posy has always dreamt of being the heroine of a Francoise Sagan novel. But life seems to have her passed by and now here she is a stressed-out mother of four. Although she's married to man called Parouselli who comes from a long line of trapeze artists and they live in a large, romantic house, it's not quite as magical as it sounds. Frank's dream of being a musician is a reality of distributing BettaKleen catalogues, the house is falling to bits AND there are slugs living under the bath. Posy wonders how everyone else manages, especially her hyper-efficient sister Flora, proprietor of 'Perfect Solutions', a company dedicated to sorting things out. Struggling through the mess of family life, Posy dreams of being a member of The Thin Legs Club, with an immaculate house, children who don't get ill, and a human Renault Espace of a husband. If only! Wry, funny, bitter-sweet, Rebecca Smith's second novel is about year in the life of a family on the brink of falling apart.