Available at Amazon.com from £5

Instead of working, as I should – with several deadlines getting closer – I’ve been unable to put down an absolutely brilliant comic novel and wanted to spread the word about it.

Mrs Normal Saves The World, by Sheila Hayman, is sparklingly satirical about well-meaning greens, but also about people in the mainstream who don’t give a toss about the planet. Whichever camp you fall into, the book will make you laugh aloud again and again – as it did me.

Better still is that Hayman’s satire – about a wife and mother-of-two who suddenly decides to ‘save the world’ – somehow manages also to make you care very much about the family at the centre, when all goes wrong, and finally to leave even a cynic feeling inspired to ‘do something’.

I’m not in the business of recommending things to buy people for Christmas, but happy to make an exception in this case. Not least because Hayman is giving all proceeds from the book to two great causes: Tree Aid and Practical Action.

PS. If you don’t want to buy it, why not do the really green thing and order it from your library?