Comfort and Joy

August 22, 2011
Sunday Times columnist and YA writer Knight (The Dirty Bits for Girls) creates a space for musings on love, family, and the simultaneous trials and delights of the holiday season in her perpetually witty novel. Readers follow Londoner Clara Dunphy née Hutt through multiple relationships over the course of three Christmases as she searches for the perfect celebration and looks for answers to her own murky family history. While the setting and tone change from Christmas to Christmas, that unerringly familiar combination of glow and chaos, what remains constant is a cast of lovable characters, from Pat, Clara’s Northern Irish mother-in-law, who insists on speaking in an offensive combination of slang and Spanish on a family trip to Morocco, to Clara’s free-spirited stepsisters. Dotting the landscape are Clara’s questions about the biological father she never knew but can’t stop thinking about. Although there’s little in the way of plot and the extended family can get Rockwellian, Knight makes up for it with well-paced dialogue and amusing and insightful anecdotes. The author captures the spirit of the season while giving us a glimpse into one modern family’s struggle with children, marital turmoil, and materialism.