A Breast of the Times

About the Book

The seven-year-old kids at little Nebden village school in Essex have unexpectedly landed the best SATS results in the whole of Britain. The mothers at the nearest fee-paying school are well miffed: could it really be due to a dodgy door-to-door salesman's educational software? Or has it to do with strange happenings up at Windyhill farm where Hetty has started up a secret human milk factory?

A ruthless neurologist from the Cambridge Science Park starts investigating, but so many liquid surprises are in store for him in the land of the Tit-Freaks that he starts believing he is the target of The Bodily Fluid Terrorists. He's not the only one confused. Take Xavier, the two-bit software developer. Every day he sits, mystified, in the village pub. Why do voluminously-endowed females always go up the hill? Why do only the flat-chested come down?

We follow a year in the life of the zany inhabitants of Nebden village as several sleuths try to work out what is going on. Human milk smoothie bars open in Cambridge and New York as the world is increasingly rocked by Hetty's leaked discoveries: that the breast has been a secret homeopathic remedy-maker all along, and that milks extracted from diseased women and added to milks customised with special anti-viral or anti-free-radical diet ingredients, have the power to cure Aids, Cancer and bird flu.

Taboos are blown sky-high, as the human breast is explored with more thoroughness and humour than any other attempt in fiction. Topical core themes include bodily fluids, alternative medicines, and attachment parenting.

This book will affect attitudes to breastfeeding, and may provide positive encouragement for those mothers who may for any reason be afraid or reluctant to breastfeed their babies. The book also contains a serious message to bottle milk manufacturers who persist in advertising in developing-world countries, thereby depriving babies of the perfect food, often leading to their premature deaths.

The style borders on literary, but is fun, contemporary, accessible, irreverent.

About the Author

Hester has been breast-obsessed for fifteen years. She breastfed her four babies for a total of ten years. She studied French and Modern Greek at Exeter College, Oxford. After spending two years with young children in New York, and two in France, she now lives in Bishops Stortford with husband Fred, the children, Chloe, Tabitha, Alfie and Bathsheba, and lots of animals and birds.

She enjoys hosting parties for theatrical groups and fund-raisers, taking in exchange students from all over the world, helping children learn to read at Northgate School and helping at Riding for the Disabled. She loves windy weather, bonfires, swimming, homeopathy, yoga, and Mslexia magazine.