Good Humour, Good Food & Good Sex

The British journalist Liz Jensen has written a book called 'War in the family', it's one of those novels that doesn't deserved to be bypassed unnoticed. Gloria is the narrator in her book, a 79 and 3 quarter years old brazen, foul-mouthed grandmother in a geriatric residence. Despite her advanced age she maintains keen interests in her 3 great passion in life: good Humour, good food and good sex!

Through Gloria's mouth, the story is at times alarming and other times hilarious. She recalled her youth as a pretty working class girl in the middle of the 2nd world war. A little fragment: "Those little Yankee soldiers! When I saw them, I couldn't help thinking of Clark Gable. The other girls too. No wonder the local boys were driven up the wall. No girls would give them the time of day while the Yankees were about. The minute the 1st Yankee whistles by, the girl's panties drop ....". In the morning the German bombs dropped on the factory of ammunition where she worked, but later at nightfall, she put on make-up and dolled herself to the nines to go dancing the Boompsadaisy.

Jensen wished to tell the story of the everyday life of ordinary people during the war, people who carried on their life despite the atrocity and turmoil; people who didn't have outstanding intelligence or morality. Gloria and her sister Marje enjoyed themselves even at such difficult times, especially with men. Like everybody else, they had their little crisis, jealousies and rivalries, who needed to find food and have some laughs in times of adversity.

Her protagonist of the book was originally a 5 year old little boy, but later she thought, why not somebody on the other end of the scale - an old woman, who could also exhibit the same freedom, be loose tongued and coquettish? And the same lack of diplomacy. The book is full of quick, witty dialogues and flashbacks. A novel that established subtle parallelism between memories historical and personal, with secrets and intrigues. She thinks If we don't remember the wars or the bad things in the past, and what led us to them, we would likely repeat the same mistakes. The question is, if this serves to help with personal traumas, or would our brain wipe out bad things in legitimate self defence?

Then of course there are those jokes Gloria liked, dotting here and there on the pages, told with that sarcastic tone of hers, a great selection of them, all very humorous and side splitting. And, her other great passion, the sex, omnipresent, exercising as social lubricant, means of reproduction, expression of love and intimacy, and weapon of blackmail. All interesting ingredients for a good read.

Tags:geriatricsex

Current Mood: Amused