Comfort and Joy: Bring on the Christmas Pudding

Comfort and Joy by India Knight is a thoroughly delightful foray into one woman’s celebration of Christmas, secular and loving it! Londoner Clara Dunphy is wacky about Christmas and love and sex but when it comes to her children, her family, and her food, she is completely and sanely and inspirationally committed to giving the best she can give and making memories that last forever (even if her marriages don’t).

I read this giddy, funny, and at times even surprisingly touching novel right after reading Alexander McCall’s latest, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, starring Isabel Dalhousie. I found myself thinking how much more I like Clara, compared to Isabel. Isabel has become a bit of a bore, rather certain and set in her ideas, while Clara, who happens to be just about the same age as Isabel, is engagingly uncertain about so much in her life, including where passion fits in her marriage and where a father she’s never seen fits into her life and where an ex-mother-in-law fits in with her Christmas — and the answers she comes up with are huge-hearted and hilarious.

I would much rather party in the Christmas season with Clara’s clan and their red baubles and carefully-wrapped Truffle than spend a summer month with Dalhousie and her mushroom-sensitive tummy (and BTW, if a niece sells you a dodgy mushroom, you do NOT turn her into the government).

If you’re looking for a read to get you in the holiday mood, go with India Knight and Clara. Comfort and Joy is a piece of flaming Christmas pudding, not very deep but certainly sweet and hot and satisfying.