The Egg Race - Polly Williams

The title, the reader should be warned – particularly any potential male readers – refers to the old female biological clock syndrome. In The Egg Race, a lot of thirtysomething women are all in a crisis of some sort – the unmarried ones are broody and desperate to be married, while the married ones are sorry they settled down and didn’t pursue a more independent life. Oh, the pressures of being a pampered middle-class woman approaching 40! Stevie is 34 years old, broody and about to be married. She should be glad to be finally plucked off the shelf (“she’d always feared that in love’s game of musical chairs, she’d be left standing”), but in reality she has doubts, but are they over her boyfriend Jez or is it just the pressure of the wedding preparations?

If the above quote quite early on isn’t enough of a warning of the direction this is all heading in, nor the advice that Stevie’s friend gives to her during wedding dress fittings (“Never let the wrong size get between you and a fabulous pair of heels”) or you are made of stronger stuff than I, then good luck to you as the events unfold – the frantic attempts to fertilise those explosions of sperm, the stress of wondering when the question is going to be popped and what to be wearing at the time, the reality of what women do sharing toilets (ugh!), the nightmare of the full-blown wedding, the honeymoon… there is no end to the horrors in store…

Added to this appallingly lightweight, superficial compendium of women’s magazine issues (“Baby-making sex can be sexy”, “The depressing phenomena of compression wrinkles”?) is some appropriate paper thin characterisation. The women are a mass of clichés, defined and distinguishable only by their taste in designer products and new age herbal stress remedies and therapies, the men are either bronzed hunks or weak, pathetic cheating bastards. Fluffy chick-lit with loads of shopping, feel-good pampering spas and massages, family complications, relationship problems, emotional outpourings and tears... it’s enough to make anyone weep really… yet in spite of this The Egg Race has the appalling fascination of those horrible women’s magazines that you just can’t help browsing through when you find them lying around.  But you’d never admit to buying one.

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