Bad Heir Day
Wendy Holden
Fiction
Review posted: 7/20/03
Author Wendy Holden has presented a book that’s wickedly fun, and decidely
English. Graduate student Anna is a struggling writer with bad luck with jobs and worse
luck with men. So when the opportunity to work with best-selling author Cassandra Knight
is handed to her on the heels of a crushing breakup with her live-in boyfriend (who
would prefer it is she would live out, thank you very much,) she jumps on it. Unfortunately
when Cassandra reads Anna’s ad requesting work as a Writer’s Assistant, Cassandra
reads that as nanny and personal slave.
It’s about this time that Anna begins to suspect things aren’t going very well.
Cassandra’s son is the spawn of Satan, and worse yet, he takes after his father; a washed
up Mick Jagger-like (not that I’m saying Mick Jagger is washed up) rock star with an
insatiable sex drive. And a leopard skin thong. (Take a deep breath, hold, and release
the breath and the horrific mental image. There you go.)
Anna is surrounded by her fellow nannies, all of whom make more than their employers. Meanwhile, as Anna can’t even get the Knights to pay her her pitifully small wage, she comes to the conclusion that she must escape before she goes insane. Solution: Man.
The good news is, he’s Scottish nobility. The bad news is he’s fixated on the
ancestral home and scared of sex. So now, instead of being stranded in London, with a
vicious brat and his equally vicious parents, she’s stuck in Scotland and her only
friends are a poet with a beard that has it’s own personality and a housewife who writes
erotica. Things are looking up.
Holden is terrific. Anna is terrific. You cheer her on, you commiserate with her,
you yell you head off at her for being so incredibly thick. She’s a heroine that everyone
can sympathize with. She feels frumpy, she’s not sure what she wants out of life, or how
to get it, and she can’t lose that last ten pounds. Holden’s characters, while outrageously
glamourous are also - sometimes painfully - recognizable from our lives.
Her distinctive writing style puts her on the map as one of the funniest people
in the library. Fun, wacky and intense, reading Bad Heir Day is a very good idea.
Contact the author
These pages are produced by and copyright to Carrie E. Byrd.
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