X-Book

Comfort and Joy

Click Buy to Log in and see personalised pricing.

Send as a gift Get in the xigxag app
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of India Knight's darkly comic Comfort and Joy. Read with humour and sensitivity by Lucy Brown, the star of the hit show Primeval.

It's December 23rd and Clara Dunphy is running around Oxford Street like a blue-arsed fly trying to buy presents. She wants to make Christmas perfect: it's a lifelong ambition. And a challenging one at the best of times, even without taking her sixteen guests - sorry, "loved ones" - and their varying degrees of social dysfunction into account. Meanwhile, something weird has happened to her marriage, and the ho, ho, ho is thin on the ground.

Why does Christmas have such an emotional hold over us? Why does family stuff hit the peak of its madness on December the 25th? And is it okay to want more than you have, when what you have seems so enviable from the outside?

A blackly funny, tender dissection of the meaning of love - family love, sibling love, children love - Comfort and Joy will make you laugh and cry.

Critics Review

Breathless, ­colourful, hilarious and honest; the dialogue is sitcom-snappy and the opening scenes in Oxford Street positively Joycean
Daily Mail
So kindly and funny and affectionate that you could probably warm your hands on it. Miraculously, this is a feel-good story that manages not to be saccharine. There are a great many good jokes here . . . but concealed amid the fun, like silver coins in a Christmas pudding, is a serious theme. This is a book you could safely give to practically anyone. Snap up plenty of copies to hand around under the tree
Spectator
I loved Comfort and Joy, a hilarious, bawdy yet touching portrait of Christmas over three years
Guardian Books of the Year
Fabulous. Laugh-out-loud funny, moving and as cuddly as Santa Claus, this is perfect for snuggling up with over the Christmas holidays
Cosmopolitan
Touching...it will make you laugh, maybe make you cry and keep you reading past bedtime
Grazia
A wickedly funny, painfully honest look at families, festivities and romantic love
Marie Claire
Tender, tough, schmaltzy, witty and heart-warming all at once. Knight has a great comic touch - there are some wonderfully rude bits and a fantastic rant about the ridiculous expectations piled on 21st-century women to be perfect - and writes with a deceptive lightness. At the heart of this funny, affectionate novel is an acknowledgement that families, like love, come in odd shapes and sizes, and that both matter more than anything
Metro
Witty enough to make you laugh out loud, but there are moments of real emotion that keep the book from being too light
Psychologies
A superb ear for dialogue...wonderfully comic
Evening Standard
Riotously high in laughs and glamour. I defy a festive grump not to be cheered by it
Independent Books of the Year
Author India Knight
Narrator Lucy Brown
Duration 7 hours and 14 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9780141973647
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Family life fiction, Humorous fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE

More from the same

Author

Narrator

About xigxag

xigxag is an independent, UK-based audiobook platform and the UK’s only B Corp certified audiobook company. We offer nearly 150,000 audiobooks, all with professional human narration. No AI-generated voices. xigxag is rated an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks and a top-rated ethical bookshop.

There is no subscription. You buy the audiobooks you want, you own them permanently, and prices start at £8.99. The more you listen over the year, the less you pay per book, and there is always a selection in Listen for Less from £3.99. You can also send audiobooks as gifts using our audiobook gift cards or in-app gifting.

Every audiobook on xigxag has honest reviews covering both the book and the narration, and our community features make it easy to share what you are listening to, discover what others recommend, and find your next listen.

Download or stream on iOS, Android, or in your browser. Browse the full catalogue at xigxag.co.uk.