The M Word by Eileen Wharton
Roberta Gallbreath is middle aged and menopausal. She dislikes her children, detests her ex-husband and despises her colleagues.
When her mother dies, Roberta is left with a pile of letters and a mystery surrounding her son. The letters reveal Roberta’s heritage is not what it seems and she is soon on a mission to become a better person.
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Told with humour and emotion, The M Word is the tale of one woman’s journey to find out where she came from. As she looks to the past for answers, more questions are raised. Will Roberta discover who she really is?
My Review
This was nothing like I expected. Oh how I laughed and cried! It’s really a book of two halves. We have Roberta’s perimenopause experience (I’m glad mine was nothing like hers) and then her mother’s unbelievably sad story of her experiences during and after the second world war.
Had the book just been about Roberta, I would not have enjoyed it so much. Her acerbic tongue is often hilarious though at times you want to cringe.
‘When I get there, I’m sweating like a blind lesbian at a whelk stall.’ What does even mean?
She has no filter and says the first thing that comes into her head, She is rude and offensive. Her ex-husband, Andy, who she calls Knobhead, ran off with Terri-Ann from Thomas Cook years ago and she is still bitter. Her experiences on Tinder, encouraged by work chum Tammy, as she tries to find a date for the office party, is one of the funniest parts of the book. Everyone she meets is either a pervert or a loony and most of them have questionable hygiene practices. When she tries speed dating, it’s even worse if that’s possible.
But there’s only so much of her ‘humour’ you can take, and having gone through my own menopause over 15 years ago, I found it hard to relate. In fact I could hardly relate to Roberta at all. She hates her mother. She detests her sister. She doesn’t even particularly like any of her three children.
‘It’s not enough, Mother, to feed and clothe us,’ says her youngest daughter…’Our souls need nourishment.’ ‘Really?’ replies Roberta, ‘I didn’t look after your feet?’
You could go as far as saying she hates everyone. The doctor simply tells her it’s due to her perimenopause. I could have slapped him.
Then when her mother is on her deathbed, she gives Roberta a pile of letters. They were written mainly from her mother to her twin brother Michael, and then to someone else as well, but I can’t say more. The letters were absolutely heart-breaking. For me it turned the story on its head and the change from light to shade and back again was so well-written that I cried and cried. What started out as a hilarious rom-com turned into an emotional rollercoaster. Absolutely brilliant.
Many thanks to @zooloo2008 for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the Author
Eileen Wharton is an Oscar winning actress, Olympic gymnast, and Influencer. She also tells lies for a living. Her first novel was published in 2011 to worldwide critical acclaim. And she’s won awards for exaggeration. It did top the Amazon humour chart so she’s officially a best-selling author. She currently has five ‘lively’ offspring ranging from thirty-three to fourteen years of age, and has no plans to procreate further, much to the relief of the local schools and police force. She lives on a council estate in County Durham. She has never eaten kangaroo testicles, is allergic to cats and has a phobia of tinned tuna. She’s retired from arguing with people on the internet.
Follow her at:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WhartonEileen
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/eileen.whartonwriter
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/eileenscribblings/
Buy Link – https://geni.us/vSw3C
