We are all made of glue (Lewycka)

I treated myself to this volume for the weekend, as I'd felt a bit stuck in a reading doldrums (yes, I have discovered, you can have too many Virago-style books in one go!), and needed cheering up. Plus, I needed something to occupy myself while my boyfriend took his nephew and sister's boyfriend around Go Ape in Bracknell. Watching them was even more tedious than imagined, so I took myself off to the car for 2 hours and felt glad that I had something good on the go.
This is the quite complicated story of Georgie, who lives with her 16 year old son, having just been left by her husband, who edits a periodical called "Adhesives in the modern world", and forms a friendship with a lady living down the street called Mrs Shapiro. Amazon have a far better synopsis than anything I could write here.
The book has all of the characteristics of Lewycka's earlier writing - quirky subjects, twists in the plot, and writing about topics that one doesn't necessarily know much - I learnt a lot about adhesion and the making of glues, armageddonism and the Israel/Palestine conflict. There are so many different elements to the plot, such as the magazine Adhesives in the modern world, the novel that Georgie is writing, and the sub-plots about members of her family that it is a really very gripping read. Samantha has described this as comfort reading with an edge; I agree that it has a bite, and is certainly good for reading when you are stuck in the doldrums, so if that is comfort reading, then this will fit the bill.

Anyway, I'm back in full flood of normal reading I think. I also finished off Diamonds are a girls best friend by Colgan (pre-sleep chick lit, very good) and Parlour Games (Mavis Cheek). I also finally read The Millstone (Drabble) which was a fantastic story about an unmarried pregnancy, which was reminiscent of The L-Shaped Room. It had been a while since I'd read a Drabble, so that was nice. I've got a couple of travel books on the go which I'll write about in due course, and although I had Sisters by the river (Comyns) in my bag for today, I picked up High table by Joanna Cannan from the library at lunchtime, which as I suspected from the title, *is* set in Oxford. So that's the plan for tonight. And perhaps I'll start a Caro Fraser, as I am enjoying her books which are fairly easy reads about a law firm in London - I am learning a lot about legal processes from them!