THE HUNGOVER GAMES

SOPHIE HEAWOOD Jonathan Cape, 272pp, £14.99

Journalist and Guardian columnist Sophie Heawood was a celebrity interviewer in Hollywood when she became pregnant after a one-night stand with a musician. This memoir documents a life turned upside down, from riotous single-living on Sunset Strip to motherhood in East London. ‘[It is] a comedy in which she is the hapless goofball, crashing from one indignity to the next,’ wrote Fiona Sturges in the Guardian. ‘But woven into the sprightly prose and self-mocking humour are moments of painful truth and profundity.’ In the Observer, Barbara Ellen also liked it ‘Her unvarnished take on doing it alone is a must-read for anyone out there, floundering, scared they’re doing it wrong. The writing is great in The Hungover Games, but the humour and honesty are even better.’

Eleanor Halls in the Telegraph admired the ‘refreshingly unapologetic’ writing but found the goofballing OTT – Heawood tending to send herself up yet to come over cautious when it came to other (famous) people. ‘Every now and then, Heawood’s jokes are rather too obvious in their rigging, and a little too corny to land.’

Halls thought that ‘Heawood should have more confidence – her analysis of how Britons, Californians and New Yorkers all reacted to her due date being the 10th anniversary of 9/11 made me laugh out loud, as did her recommendation of a “long and sexual holiday” to the nursery teacher who called her daughter overly exuberant aged two. If only she mocked others more often.’