My Life on a Plate
India Knight Penguin, 247pp, £5.99
ISBN 0140281878
India Knight's journalist heroine, Clara Hutt, is a pretty, 5ft 9in size 16, with dark hair, green eyes and a "sneaky liking for vulgar shoes and organza". "You probably want to know how I Got My Man," she says. The "trick", apparently, is not to go looking for him. Yet, having found him so easily, she feels quite pleased with herself, especially when she looks at her friend, Tamsin, who is "34, single and desperate". Clara, now a self-styled "Old Married Lady", is convinced that she has left her "minxdom" behind.
My Life on a Plate takes a well-used literary leitmotif: whom God would destroy he first makes smug. For this is nothing less than the unravelling of the eight-year marriage of which Clara was once so sure, and which, one presumes, is informed by Knight's own experiences (she wrote about her marital disaster in various newspaper columns).
But just as in romantic novels you wonder about life after the happy-ever-after ending, have you never wondered about what happens after the unhappy-ever-after ending - when the husband has dumped his thirtysomething wife, her cellulite and the two children and decamped to a new life in Paris editing Vogue Hommes? Well, with this novel, you don't have to wonder. In fact, you are given very little time to be moved by Clara's plight at all: on page 232 ("You are a fucking pig, Robert"), he breaks the news that he is off; by page 244, with only three pages to go, Clara has a gorgeous new man in tow.
You probably don't want to know how she got her man, but I'll tell you anyway: she meets him through work. Sent to interview the Irish dancer and choreographer Sam Dunphy, without having done any research, Clara gets sloshed, puts on an Irish accent and makes jokes about "taking the mick". Having asked Dunphy what sort of dancer he is ("Ballroom? Morris?"), she follows up with wincingly embarrassing questions. She insists that her readers will want to know about the "shag frenzy" that is ballet school. (This is apparently a parody of an actual interview that Knight conducted with the singer-songwriter Michael Bolton.)
The "dark 'n' brooding" Dunphy is quite naturally bowled over by this feisty English Miss, invites her to a drinks party after the show, and then on to a meal with friends at the Groucho Club. Clara quickly starts to lose weight, has a facial, buys a diaphanous, glittery dress ("I want to look fantastic") and is informed by her husband that, he suspects, Dunphy fancies her. Dunphy does indeed turn out to be the new man at the end of the book.
Two incidents are especially memorable. One is the wistful moment when Clara and her children are invited to the christening of her ex-ex-stepfather's "first grandchild" and she checks the display of family photographs. He has long had scores of photos of his "blood-children" around the house, but only one of her on her wedding day. The second is the account, by the luckless Tamsin, of sex with Dave, a man with a lolling tongue and a one-inch penis called Little Dave, which is almost unbearably funny.
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