Rebuilding Coventry

Nothing you'll read this summer will make you laugh quite so uproariously as this regrettably brief satire by the author of the Adrian Mole series. In Rebuilding Coventry, Coventry Dakin is a beautiful working-class English housewife unfortunately married to a boring clod who's obsessed with tortoises. One night, in a local Fred Astaire theme pub, an obnoxious neighbor begins a rumor that Coventry is his lover. The next day, in the midst of cleaning her chimney, she snaps and finds herself wandering through the streets of London, covered with soot, penniless, and wanted by the police for murdering the neighbor with an action-figure doll. Not that the plot really matters; Sue Townsend's version of the phone book would undoubtedly be a wicked, delicious read. A