Jenny Turner writes:

Knight’s in-your-faceness works well in the introduction to The Thrift Book, which describes the big-spender mindset in Pucci-print swirls: ‘Just as I used to see being fat as being indicative of having a wonderful appetite for life (as well as buns), I think I subconsciously saw my financial idiocy as a sign of a rather charmingly bohemian easy-come-easy-go approach to life in general’; ‘I’ve got over lying in the bath pretending to be Ophelia’ – so it wasn’t just me, then? – ‘but, clearly, not over thinking money is, like, really, really square.’ Some of the advice in The Thrift Book is sensible and boring: shop locally and daily, and/or online, but always with a ‘properly compiled list’. Buy orange-label, go to Lidl instead of Waitrose, avoid ready meals, BOGOF, nasty things like economy mince (even the Sainsbury’s copywriters couldn’t think of a nice thing to say about theirs). Eat seasonally: ‘it’s fashionable, it’s thrifty.’ ‘Bottled water has had its day.’ Other bits are sensible and quite interesting: if you get a Liberty’s storecard, even if you don’t use it, you’ll be invited to previews of their sales. ‘Old-fashioned girdles’ are ‘much cheaper than miracle pants and just as effective.’ ‘Dry-cleaning is mostly a myth . . . The truth of the matter is . . . anything that has a label saying “Dry Clean” can be washed by hand.’ I liked the parsimony – in both senses – of a recipe to make an exfoliating face mask out of ground-up aspirin: aspirin is salicylic acid, which is apparently the active ingredient of commercially available face masks. And the idea of a Bonfire Night picnic on a hill, with hot dogs wrapped in foil and hot apple juice in flasks.

(LRB 14 May 2009)

Fig Tree | hardback 272 pp. |ISBN: 9781905490370