Oh Christmas with your joy, oh Christmas with your pain. Oh Christmas with your Spanish beaches, oh Christmas with your brined lamb ribs in suitcases. Oh Christmas with your hunt for swedes, oh Christmas with your demented mother. Oh Christmas with your cactus Santa, oh Christmas with your unreliable family – slaves to their confused, annoying impulses and behaviour.

Protagonist Saga is a theatre director who has decided to arrange the perfect Christmas in Spain. She doesn’t do this without desperation, because her mother suffers from dementia with elements of psychosis and has a habit of running away at the worst of times. Nevertheless, Saga has made up her mind, despite many cautions from a doctor friend. Christmas will be a great. Everyone will have a nice time, celebrating in the usual way and – goddammit – in the absolute nicest way. Granddad and Grandma are in, her crypto millionaire son is in, everyone is in. But challenges present themselves as soon as they arrive. Her mother can’t orientate herself in her new surroundings, the children are out of control, and why does her husband keep jogging to Benidorm?

Feliz Navidad is a humorous novel, but it is also written with fear and trembling and sorrow. It is a book about being a middle-aged woman, an unfaithful husband, a mother who keeps disappearing – and about who we become when things get hard.