From Publishers Weekly
British writer Cobbold's debut novel, which introduces three generations of women, each ineffectual in her own way, proves much sadder than it is droll. It's been decided that Selma Merryman, recently widowed and showing unmistakable signs of senility, must leave her lovely Devon estate and become a resident of a retirement home. Selma's daughter, Dagmar, a compulsive hand-washer horrified by anything remotely unsanitary, including her now incontinent mother, considers the home a fine solution. But Selma's 31-year-old granddaughter, Amelia, determines to liberate Selma from the community of pathetic residents and authoritarian nurses. (The title comes from these caretakers' unappetizing tendency to serve fish as a snack, and an incident in which a nurse disposes of sick guppies by boiling them.) Cobbold effectively conveys the poignance and pain of seeing a once-vibrant individual confined in a loveless environment. Her dark humor, however, which focuses on Amelia's lack of self-confidence (her philandering husband has just demanded a divorce), patronizing doctors and Dagmar's fear of germs, gives the impression that lone women can't cope calmly with adversity. Selma's forgetfulness and weakness lead to crises on her trips away from the home, and although Amelia averts each disaster, it's with ample hysteria. Though a bestseller in Britain, where it was nominated for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, this tale of one woman's empathy, her mother's apathy and her grandmother's decline may not be Americans' cup of tea.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
We are once again in the cozy English countryside of Barbara Pym and Joanna Trollope. The village inhabitants of these novels putter in their gardens and reread Jane Austen with a cat or two curled up beside an Aga stove. Cobbold's first novel centers on Amelia Lindsay, a 31-year-old freelance writer coping with a failing relationship, a mother neurotically obsessed with germs, and a beloved grandmother, who is slowly sinking into the hazy mists of Alzheimer's. Grandmother Selma's stubborn quest to leave her nursing home by Christmas and return to her family home, sold to strangers without her knowledge, preoccupies Amelia even as she deals with her crazy mother, faithless boyfriend, and stalled career plans. There are no more Barbara Pym novels, and Joanna Trollope only produces a book a year, so thank goodness for new writers like Cobbold, whose touching, bittersweet story brings us back to this familiar fictional world.
Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, Ontario
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.