A hundred and twenty things people say, and the exact sentence to say back.

You have had this happen.

Somebody says something at a table, lightly, in front of other people, and it is built so that you cannot object without looking small. Your face goes warm. You say nothing.

I spent the better part of fifty years at other people's tables. I was a diplomat's wife, and in those rooms nobody was allowed to raise their voice, least of all me. I learned to answer these remarks the only way they can be answered: one short sentence, said plainly, and then silence.

People write and ask me for the words themselves. So I have written them down.

It is not a list of comebacks.

Comebacks do not work. There are a hundred thousand versions of every remark and you cannot learn them all. But underneath all of them there are about twelve methods. Learn to hear the method in the first three words, and you can answer any version of it calmly, including the ones that are not in this book.

1. The joke

   “Only joking.” “Can't you take a joke?”

2. The concern

   “I'm only saying this because I care about you.”

3. The honesty flag

   “I'm only being honest.”

4. The audience

   Said in front of six people, never once alone.

5. The no offence

   “No offence, but…”

6. The instruction

   “Richard does like the curtains left open.”

7. The comparison

   “Your sister would have loved it.”

8. The flip

   “Aren't you being a bit sensitive?”

9. The score

   “After everything we've done for you.”

10. The tradition

    “We always did it this way.”

11. The help

    The cupboards rearranged while you were away.

12. The silence

    “I'll say nothing.” And everybody hears it.

What is in it

For every method: how it works, the exact line, the second line for when they press, and the one thing you must never say instead. My own story runs through all of it, including the eleven years my mother-in-law did not use my name, what I finally said, and the evening it changed.

There is an index at the back arranged by what was said, so that you can find the words in ten seconds. There is a chapter on saying it in writing: in a message, in an email, in a family group. And there is one page with all twelve lines together, for keeping on your telephone.

A page from the index: what was said, what to say, and where to read why.

What it will not do

It will not help with a person who frightens you, controls your money, or decides where you may go. That is not rudeness and it does not want a better sentence. That wants real help, and it says so in the first pages of the book.

And it is not for everybody. If you are perfectly able to say what you think at your own dinner table, keep your forty-seven dollars.

Eleanor

I am seventy-two. I married a Foreign Office man in 1976 and spent the next thirty years being introduced to people who had already decided what I was. Lisbon, Vienna, Nairobi, Delhi. Rooms where raising your voice was the only unforgivable thing.

Richard died some years ago. I keep his roses, badly. I play bridge on Thursdays, I sit on the parish council, and my son rings from Singapore on Sundays.

— Eleanor Pemberton

Questions