May Contain Nuts: A Novel of Extreme Parenting

Alice never imagined she would end up like this, so anxious after hearing about the dangers of meteorites that she makes her children wear bike helmets in the wading pool. Her husband, David, has taught their four-year-old to list every animal represented in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. But the more they push their children, the more things there are to worry about. It seems no amount of gluten rationing or herbal teas can improve their children's intellectual development, and as Alice's eldest child looks set to fail her entrance exam for the exclusive private school on which her parents have pinned all their hopes, Alice decides to take matters into her own hands. With a baseball cap pulled low over her face, Alice shuffles into a hall of two hundred kids and takes the test in place of her daughter, her first examination in twenty years. With a comic eye for detail that has sent his books to the top of the British best-seller lists, May Contain Nuts is a funny, compelling, and provocative satire of the manic world of today's overcompetitive, overprotective families.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Published: 10/07/2005
ISBN: 9780802170156
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 8.26h x 5.56w x 0.82d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 08/08/2005 pg. 211
Ingram Advance 09/01/2005 pg. 92
Library Journal 09/15/2005 pg. 57
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2005 pg. 761