Summer Holiday

The riotously funny, and startlingly true, new novel from Penny Smith.The riotously funny new novel from Penny Smith.

Miranda Blake is divorced. At 45, things are starting to head south. She's toying with the idea of Botox. Toying with the idea of facial surgery. Toying with getting a job. Toying with getting a toy boy. The only block to all those things is her stiff, uppity daughter, 23 year old Lucy, who takes after her father. Pompous, is how Miranda describes it. (Sane, is how Lucy sees it.) Her son, Sam, is taking an extended gap year. He's 21 and been backpacking since he left school at 18 with a clutch of A levels. Her friends are trying to set her up with a collection of bankers and company directors… similar types to her ex-husband, Nigel.

Nigel – just saying his name makes her wince. How on earth could she have ever married Nigel, let alone have sex with him? It must have been the pheromones, or the hormones – possibly just the fact that she could not be bothered to get a job and her parents were having a go at her.

Every new date ends in disaster now. So, one summer's day, Miranda decides to go and help clean out a local canal, where she falls for Alex, a dreadlocked eco-warrior, and things start to get complicated…