Joseph Connolly

A review quoted on the back cover of this book hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned: “It is Connolly’s skill to get the reader to laugh at what should make you cry or at least wince”. I did laugh – it was all funny but there were some bits where the laughter meter hit ten – the two policemen with their misplaced vowels...the éclair on the tea trolley...Rambling Rosie at the end. But I felt uncomfortable about it. Given that the very first scene has hapless husband show more Kevin being brutally attacked by his wife Emily, who is armed with a coffee table, it doesn’t feel like the stuff of comedy. People tend to overlook the many male victims of domestic violence, and by making it funny, this book does those victims no favours. I thought to myself: what if you swopped the genders around in the book – and Emily was the one being attacked with a coffee table – it’s unlikely this book would have made it to publication, and instead would be exchanged under plain cover in murky corners like the most illicit porn. If anything, it underlined how male-female equality is still a way off.

As I was reading it felt as though I was clinging on to a hot air balloon, gliding over the rooftops, every time there was an injection of humour it kept the balloon buoyed up and everything was great; on the other hand every time the book’s resident creep Raymond invoked the C-word or indulged in any kind of sexual activity, air belched out of the balloon and I was barking my shins on the chimney tops.

The other notable feature of this novel is authorial voice – it’s not a first person narrative, nor is it entirely a third-person omniscient narrative. Instead the narrator hovers amongst the characters, like a puppeteer who can’t keep his bonce out of view, offering chirpy little observations. There were shades of Harlan Coben, but what it reminded me of most insistently was the Mr Men books. It was all the “Do you know what happens next? Shall I tell you?” type of thing that made this read a bit like a worked-up Mr Men book for adults (that would be “Mr Henpecked” or quite possibly “Little Miss Repulsive”). It works the other way too, with a bit of name substitution: “Do you know the thing that really got on Mr Tickle’s tits? The thing that was really bloody getting to him? I think you maybe do.....”

I left it a few days after finishing reading before reviewing this book. I wanted to get the laughter out of my head to see if it still seemed funny in retrospect. I’ve got to admit it does. (Fairy liquid in the whipping cream. Snort.) But I still feel guilty. show less

I liked the cover and I really enjoyed the bits and pieces of social history. The plot was clever, as was the technique of recording characters' thoughts as if one were reading their minds. But that was also one of the problems I had, since I sometimes found it over-written and difficult to follow easily because some of the speech mannerisms were unfamiliar. However, what really lowered my opinion of the book was the not-so-subtle racism. I'm not sure if it was intentional (god forbid!) but show more in trying to represent attitudes and behaviours of the time, the author seemed to be endorsing them. I hope I'm not being unfair, and I realise that not every book ever written has to try to change the world, and that probably he was simply trying to be accurate, but the moments that made me very uncomfortable and unhappy could possibly have been balanced by acknowledging the presence of people of colour in Britain for a longer time (just a sentence or two!), but even more so, by making the black characters more multi-dimensional and real instead of just figures (and maybe giving the reader a glimpse into their thoughts). The straw that broke the camel's back was a reference to pawnbrokers as "yids". Anyway, that's my opinion! show less

Never read any of his books before but on the strength of this one I won't be reading anymore. I live in Belsize Park and the author reviews local eateries and wrote such a funny and damning piece on a local hotel which had a new chef and restaurant and knowing England's Lane well I had to take the plunge...He does write stream of consciousness pieces with his characters, the shopkeepers in the Lane, and it tweeks memories of products and brands commonplace in 1959 but to my mind it has show more little depth and is rather empty. Best bit is the author's description of what he feels a writer should be;
"The novel...is no more than a baggy contrivance, a ramshackle edifice without foundation-alluring only as is a tawdry bubble, a bright-painted Jezebel jammed and caked with gimcrack coincidence so as to insult the intellect, while peopled by the flimsiest shades that defy all absorption or credulity." Tongue in cheek and the Daily Mail says "May well be his masterpiece." show less

Oh dear. This is unquestionably the worst-written book I can remember reading, even allowing for my only foray into modern chick lit (a Sophie Kinsella).

Connolly has written a biography of PG Wodehouse, and a reviewer in The Times likened this book to one of PGW's (I can only assume the reviewer had never read any PGW), but there are no wonderful Wodehousian metaphors and I couldn't detect any similarity of characterisation or plotting.

I only got to page twenty something as I was keener to show more get out a blue pencil and rewrite and correct it than actually to read the story, so I never reach any of the (allegedly) really funny sections.

I rarely give up on a book and have certainly never given up on one after so few pages, but it was too dire to waste any more time; I read for pleasure, not to get cross!

Casual and even incoherent language can work in direct speech and even, if done skilfully, in narrative, but the rambling, impossibly punctuated sentences with surplus words in a random order is continuous and infuriating. show less