Books & Poetry

Kate Long’s first two books were deservedly big successes. Not only were they funny, but her subjects were quite unlike anyone else’s. She was writing about real women – the very opposite of the fakes conjured up by media-savvy, London-based chicklit authors. There were no white wine hangovers, disastrous dates or, as one of Long’s no-nonsense heroines might have it, middle-class whingers who didn’t know they were born.

With her third book, she’s deviated slightly from her theme of downtrodden girls from up north finding their way in the world. The narrator of ‘Queen Mum’, Ally, has a neighbour friend who is anything but standard fare. On the surface, Juno is middle-class, bright, cultured and frighteningly aspirational (read: pushy). Together with her film-buff husband, Manny, and exotically gorgeous, musical instrument-wielding daughters, Juno is the archetypal has-it-all woman. But before Long’s fans start frothing at the mouth, wondering if she has deserted them for the yummy mummies of bourgeois Britain, never fear. Juno, with her apparently unshakeable self-confidence, volunteers her family to appear on a reality TV show called ‘Queen Mum’ (a slightly fictionalised version of ‘Wife Swap’). From here on in, the façade of Juno’s life becomes as wobbly as a soap opera set. Meanwhile, Ally has her own troubles, having lost her youngest son in an accident a few years previously. She is also trying not to cling to her surviving son, newly adolescent, who may or may not be gay.

Long is as compulsively readable as ever, while the class contrast adds a deeper, wistful element missing from her previous work.