Archive: This review was first published on March 6, 2013 by the Daily Post
When Rita enrols on an Open University English literature course, she tells her tutor that she wants to "know everything".
Rita is a sweet 26-year-old married woman from a working class background who rues the fact she had no proper education, which she admits is mainly her own fault. Peer pressure dictated that clothes and boys were cooler than trying to pass exams.
A decade after leaving school Rita realises there is more to life than telly, karaoke and having the latest phone. She wants to know about poetry and literature, to be able to talk about it with other people and understand what they say back to her.
It is this rampant aspiration in Rita that brings her into contact with alcoholic tutor Frank, who is at first staunchly against being forced into teaching her. He has low self esteem and very little get up and go; he is a remnant of a once great man whose sights are now firmly set on the gutter, no longer the stars.
