Number Ten

by Sue Townsend (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2002)

This is a bit of silly fiction with a few good laughs and tidbits of gratifying political fantasy. The premise is that the Prime Minister of England (Labour Party, but the leadership is looking for another name) skips out of Number Ten and goes about the countryside disguised as a woman, getting in touch with some repressed emotions and feminine parts his personality, while failing miserably in picking up on the political lessons he might have learned. Traveling with him is a policeman who has had to leave his elderly mother in not the best hands. One could wish there was a bit more substance to this story, but its political heart seems to be in the right place, there are occasional good insights, and any sort of laugh is awfully hard to find now, int it? Suzette checked this one out of the Vancouver Public Library. Townsend is also the author of the acclaimed Adrian Mole books, which I have not yet read.