THEODORA'S DIARY
By Penny Culliford
MarshallPickering. 264 pages. £6.99
ISBN 0 00 711001 4
This book is the journal of a young woman who, isolated through contracting chickenpox, was looking for something to relieve her boredom.
She began recording a year of her fictitious life. Written in a light manner and with Victoria Wood-style humour, it is at times a drone as we go into the details of Theodora's thoughts and ideas, her addiction to chocolate, her regular blunders and her encounters with her unusual family and the eccentric, churchy people who she knows. I found the book a little trite and irreverent in places and hoped that it would not get into the hands of unbelievers who would have their worst fears of the Christian church confirmed.
Indeed, when the girl in question goes on to marry an unbeliever and talks about hoping that God knows how lucky he is, what sort of Christian standard is portrayed here? None at all.
