Confessions of a Failed Grown Up

In Confessions of a Bad Mother, Stephanie described how she brought up her children 'wrong'. Now she unlocks her singular inability (but one which secretly we all share) to grow up: forty-five last birthday but she doesn't feel any older, but of course she does - as in deafer, stiffer, and less able to read the dosage instructions on a bottle of Calpol. But the supposedly normal challenges of human existence feel frequently as though they are beyond her. Life is constantly confusing, frustrating and, at times, overwhelming. At forty-five - but only on paper - she's still a child in a suit, bluffing her way with one eye looking over her shoulder, expecting any minute to be found out and taken back to the nursery. Of course, that isn't such a bad place to be. Sometimes she even wants to go back there, but is cruelly aware that she no longer fits the chairs. Also featuring Things to Cook in Stilettos When You're Drunk, Why I am a Time Lord, A Hundred Ways to Wreck an Evening, Ten Things They Don't Tell You in Biology and The Grown-Ups' phrase book, Stephanie Calman's candid, touching and hysterically funny new book gives hope to bad mothers and failed grown-ups everywhere: read it and know that you are not alone.

Stephanie Calman is married with two children. So far, she seems to have got away with it.