Böcker av Stephanie Calman

The original Bad Mother is back, with the inside track on how to survive your kids turning from sweet little cherubs to troublesome teenagers.

Stephanie Calman moves on from bad motherhood, failed grown-upness to the ultimate in tricky relationships: that of mother and daughter. In typically candid Calman style she serves up a painfully acute examination of the human condition, softened by the bellylaugh of recognition that will seize all who read her. As a generation finds itself parenting its parents while still trying to haul up its children, she has - once again - hit the zeitgeist firmly over the head.

The idea for this book came when Stephanie began making a list of things that annoy her about her husband, and found how hard it was, once she had started, to stop. Here are the first Ten Things, just to give you an idea. He: (1) Leaves the bread unwrapped after making toast so it goes stale. (2) Writes illegible names and addresses on things like Christmas cards then tells her off when she try to amend them. (3) Breathes really loudly when he's asleep - 'I wasn't SNORING' - so that it's like being woken every night at 2am by Darth Vader. And not in a sexy, black cloak, galaxy ruling sort of way. (4) Says, 'I'm putting you in charge of that' as if he's doing her a favour when he wants to get out of doing something. (5) Says, 'Well, let's not make a problem out of it, shall we?' before ignoring the thing she's just told him about that's really bugging her and that she wants him to fix. (6) Doesn't fix things the minute she asks him to. (7) Manages to get the children to bed with far less yelling than she does. (8) Always sees the other side in an argument, i.e., the side that isn't hers. (10) Adores her mother. Viciously funny, touchingly honest and only too true, this is Stephanie Calman at her brilliant best.

Funny, acutely observed, frighteningly honest and drawing on her own and hundreds of other mum's real experiences, Stephanie Calman serves up the perfect antidote to all those books that tell you that your children must be perfect, and to all those Stepford mums and kids out there who look as if they just might be: perfectly groomed, perfectly behaved and perfectly brilliant. The reality, as we all know, encompasses sleepless nights, no sex for years, baby sick on your best cashmere cardy, the terrible twos and then, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the sitting room, terrible teenagers whose only means of communication is the slamming door or the grunt.

In Confessions of a Bad Mother, Stephanie described how she brought up her children 'wrong'. Now she unlocks her singular inability (but one which secretly we all share) to grow up: forty-five last birthday but she doesn't feel any older, but of course she does - as in deafer, stiffer, and less able to read the dosage instructions on a bottle of Calpol. But the supposedly normal challenges of human existence feel frequently as though they are beyond her. Life is constantly confusing, frustrating and, at times, overwhelming. At forty-five - but only on paper - she's still a child in a suit, bluffing her way with one eye looking over her shoulder, expecting any minute to be found out and taken back to the nursery. Of course, that isn't such a bad place to be. Sometimes she even wants to go back there, but is cruelly aware that she no longer fits the chairs. Also featuring Things to Cook in Stilettos When You're Drunk, Why I am a Time Lord, A Hundred Ways to Wreck an Evening, Ten Things They Don't Tell You in Biology and The Grown-Ups' phrase book, Stephanie Calman's candid, touching and hysterically funny new book gives hope to bad mothers and failed grown-ups everywhere: read it and know that you are not alone.