Thirty-something Lizzie Burns lives between two worlds: a mature student and mother in the final year of an English degree she is caught in a desperately sad, often hilariously funny cultural clash. Branded 'no right in the heid' by her resentful husband, her disgruntled father and the inhabitants of the small seaside town where she lives, she must juggle Shakespeare's tragic heroines with the demands of three unruly children; and stave off her fear that she just isn't cut out for the hallowed Faculty of Arts at all. As finals loom, Lizzie begins to feel just how easily she could lose her grip - and see her aspirations, and family, slip away from her. But this woman is not so easily defeated...

Thirtysomething mother of three Lizzie Burns is trying to perform a delicate juggling act in author Maggie Graham's Sitting Among the Eskimos. Lizzie is a mature student with her third year exams looming, desperately trying to satisfy her appetite for learning while coping with the pressures of her home and her husband Colin.

I can’t find any paper to write my list on. A bloody student with no paper. Christ, you’re neither use nor ornament Lizzie. Right. Lists. I don’t know where to start. I should be writing an essay, or a poem, or a novel. How many women have written endless lists instead of masterpieces?

Having married early in a community that is mystified by her need to return to education, she finds it difficult to justify herself and explain her need for something more, not least to herself. As the academic year progresses and her relationship with her husband deteriorates, she needs her wry sense of humour, her strong spirit and all the support from her friends that she can muster. Lizzie’s story has a genuine feel to it, from the descriptions of daunted "freshers" to her relationship with her elderly father, the use of conversational dialect and the feeling that Graham is drawing on personal experience. The prose however, can sometimes feel like it’s going round in circles rather than moving the plot forward, but then this itself reflects Lizzie’s trapped pattern of thinking. Never able to give herself wholly to either her studies or her family, the endless cycle of guilt continues until it looks like Lizzie may never finish at all. This is a bright novel that looks intelligently at the practical side of "having it all".

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Rachel Ediss

length: (cm)19.5 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.8