Living with Teenagers, By Anonymous Headline

The teenagers as described are so unpleasant one wonders why she didn't kick the whole lot of them out – and the husband too, whose role here is to carp from the sidelines while doing nothing to help his wife discipline their irrational, rude, selfish, dishonest, foul-mouthed brood. It's hard to believe the teenagers could really have been as awful as depicted, but if they were, then whose fault is that?

The writing is lively and witty in a journalistic way and, back when they were newspaper columns, these tales of family strife might have been entertaining enough – albeit reinforcing all the crudest stereotypes about teenagers. But 378 pages of them is way too much.