Ali has been married to Ed for years and she’s always thought she was happy. But when handsome young artist Christian falls in love with her, she’s more than a little bit flattered. Christian is nearly young enough to be her son yet he makes her feel beautiful and loved.
When Ed finds out, he’s just a little bit miffed and kicks Ali out - although one benefit of the new arrangement is that at least he doesn’t have to be quite so embarrassed about his own feelings for his scary workmate Orla. And come to think about it, his youngest son Elliott’s nursery school teacher Nicola is kind of hot too.
Meanwhile Ali sets up home with Christian and his young housemates Robbie and Rebecca, who happens to be Christian’s ex-girlfriend. Christian is kind and sweet and attentive and although he is just a big kid, he does make Ali feel very happy. In addition, Ed’s brother Neil is trying and failing to chat up Ali’s sister Jemma, even though she prefers married men.
In many ways, this book was great. I love the idea of a thirty-eight year old mother of three sharing a house with her toy boy and his mates. I also love how all the single woman around seem to be throwing themselves at Ed now he’s newly single. It was also quite hilarious the way Neil and Jemma clearly liked each other a lot but keep fucking things up.
But I wanted to see more. I wanted to see more of Ali trying her best to get on with Robbie and Rebecca, two people who are completely unlike her, rather than just telling us that Robbie was okay and Rebecca was a bitch. I actually thought Rebecca was mostly amazingly nice to her under the circumstances. How would you feel if you were woken up in the middle of the night by the girlfriend of the man you love needing a place to stay? I think it says a lot for Rebecca that she didn’t kick her out onto the street there and then.
It’s an amazing and original situation with the potential to be really hilarious, as well as giving some very different people the chance to get to know and learn to appreciate each other. But there just wasn’t enough of the parts of the book that interested me most. The book does have some absolutely hilarious moments but I couldn’t help feeling that Carole Matthews missed an opportunity here.
Then towards the end, something really major and shocking and life-changing happens and in a way it spoiled the book. First of all, this book is a comedy – it has some underlying serious messages in it but on the surface, it’s a very funny comedy. So to bring this big event in near the end seemed really inappropriate and strange when you’ve spent five-sixths of the book laughing.
Secondly, this big event is key in helping the characters to decide what they want from life. This is fine and realistic. But I kind of feel the end of the book should be about the characters’ working out what they really want and although it’s not unrealistic that it should take something really major to help them decide this, it does in a way make everything else in the book irrelevant. This big event means it doesn’t matter what they’ve learned about themselves and other people. All that matters in the end is who copes best in a crisis. And I don’t see what that’s got to do with deciding whom you really love. There’s no way I’m dumping my boyfriend for someone competent.
Even if I agree with how things stand at the end of this book (which to be honest I’m not completely sure I do), I’m sure there must have been a way of working things out that was more convincing, more satisfying and more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. And if Matthews wanted something big and dramatic, maybe she could have made the story into a serious story instead of a comedy. It was like something terrible was happening and I was still waiting for the punchline.
Not many of the characters were likeable but I did find them interesting. Ali seemed a bit moany and obsessive and embarrassing but I genuinely wanted things to work out for her and I was interested in how she was going to make changes in her life. Matthews’ writing ensured that even though she was unfaithful pretty much from the start, she wasn’t the villain of the piece. She was just feeling lonely and unloved and then she met someone who made sure she didn’t feel that way anymore.
Ed was even worse. I really feel for the poor kids. He seemed desperate to prove his masculinity and the way he treats Orla and Nicola (and Ali) just isn’t very nice. It doesn’t matter how forceful and determined to get into his pants Orla and Nicola are (in very different ways), it’s still not very nice of him to shag both of them. At least Ali waited until Ed had thrown her out before jumping into bed (or rather into the bath) with Christian. But it was interesting watching Ed trying to work out which one he liked best. It seemed like he changed his mind all the time. Maybe Matthews had to write him this way in order to ensure that Ali didn’t look bad but it was hard to sympathise with him much – although he was certainly very amusing.
Christian was just adorable. He’s sweet and well-meaning but a bit useless. He does do some awful things (really quite seriously awful, not to mention illegal) and he does seem scarily immature for a twenty-three year old, even by my standards. He seems more like a sixteen year old, maybe even younger, who wants to be a grown-up and in some ways has a more grown-up outlook than most people his age but stick him in the grown-up world and he doesn’t have a clue. But his feelings for Ali seem warm, genuine and romantic. He tries really hard to make her happy. It’s just at the same time he’s trying equally hard to make himself happy.
But my favourite character, Sharon, was hardly in it. She was the tart Christian met at the nightclub on the same night that Ali was thrown out by Ed. Sharon is just so amazingly nice and caring. She just wants something to eat and it isn’t even her house but she can tell Ali’s upset so she asks if she’s okay and offers to make her a cup of tea. Even when she realises Ali is essentially her rival for Christian’s affections, Sharon is still really nice to her. And why shouldn’t she be? Nice people come in all shapes and sizes, including as little slags. The other characters in this book could learn a lot from her. And so could I.
It’s funny how little things can annoy you in a book – and often it’s not the writer’s fault at all. At one point, Matthews referred to ‘a turn of turtles’ and I got really excited because I happen to know the collective noun for turtles is a bale of turtles. But I looked it up on Google just in case and unfortunately turn and bale are both correct. So instead of showing off how clever I am for knowing the real collective noun for turtles, I instead look ignorant for only knowing one of the terms. And that’s even more annoying than someone getting it wrong.
Monday, 29 November 2010
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Birthday Girls (Annabel Giles)****
So I've failed slightly at posting every Sunday without fail...
This is a very cleverly-written and interesting book with a most unfortunate opening sentence which even more unfortunately comes true. In detail. Let’s put it this way, if I’d read the opening sentence in the shop, I would not have bought it. Emetophobes beware.
Birthday Girls follows the story of six women on their birthdays, ranging from ten-year-old Scarlett to Constance, who is sixty. They don’t all have their birthday on the same day but it follows the six woman over the course of just over a year so Scarlett is eleven by the end of the book. Four of them are in one family, the other two are from a different family but one of the male characters is sleeping with a woman from each family so they’re all kind of related in ways they discover as the book progresses. They also have various acquaintances in common – it’s quite fun when various minor characters start popping up in different places.
The book is divided up into sections with each section taking place on a particular person’s birthday. Most of each section is told from the point of view of the birthday girl although by the time you get to the final section, which tells you about Constance’s birthday, the POV jumps about a bit more as all the stories gradually resolve themselves.
It’s a really interesting way of telling a story and it’s also one that works perfectly well for the story – or stories – Annabel Giles tells. I don’t know if the idea for the plot or the narrative structure came first – often when the narrative structure is the first idea, it can be difficult finding a story to fit it and when the plot comes first, it can be equally difficult to shoehorn it all into something with such a rigid structure. But the two fit really well together.
I also like the characters. They’re all so completely different and in some ways they live in different worlds but the connections between the characters are still convincing. Scarlett can be a bit annoying (she’s a bit young and cute) but I really liked the other characters. Some people might find Sophie a bit weak, wet and embarrassing, Della certainly has her bitchy side, Constance seems a bit mad and Millicent, until you know the full story, can seem very stupid, desperate and a bit of a doormat, in a snobby sort of way (if you can imagine such a thing). As for Jessica, she is a bit of a sad wannabe and no-one in the book seems to like her.
But I really liked all of them. Even Scarlett isn’t that bad. Sophie is sweet and loving, and very brave in her way. Della’s determined independence is both admirable and moving because you can tell she’s hurting under the surface. Constance is quite mad but delightfully intrepid and with-it. Millicent is an amazing woman, with great strength, intelligence, courage and patience. And I had a lot of sympathy for Jessica, who finally has to accept she’s not a big star who’s loved by millions. It’s a very sad story and I always felt she was more a victim of circumstances than actually being a horrible person. It’s like being a star was all she knew how to do.
There are problems with the book. Sometimes the birthdays can end on a bit of a cliffhanger and you might never find out what happened next because the story has jumped forward a few months and while the event was hugely important at the time, it has paled into insignificance by then. Also the big final twist at the end was something I saw coming a mile off. I think if I’d worked it out very near the end, it might have had more impact but as it was, I had enough time to come to the conclusion that it was far too coincidental that things worked out as they did and it was a bit of a soap-opera moment and the book might have been stronger without it.
I did enjoy it though.
This is a very cleverly-written and interesting book with a most unfortunate opening sentence which even more unfortunately comes true. In detail. Let’s put it this way, if I’d read the opening sentence in the shop, I would not have bought it. Emetophobes beware.
Birthday Girls follows the story of six women on their birthdays, ranging from ten-year-old Scarlett to Constance, who is sixty. They don’t all have their birthday on the same day but it follows the six woman over the course of just over a year so Scarlett is eleven by the end of the book. Four of them are in one family, the other two are from a different family but one of the male characters is sleeping with a woman from each family so they’re all kind of related in ways they discover as the book progresses. They also have various acquaintances in common – it’s quite fun when various minor characters start popping up in different places.
The book is divided up into sections with each section taking place on a particular person’s birthday. Most of each section is told from the point of view of the birthday girl although by the time you get to the final section, which tells you about Constance’s birthday, the POV jumps about a bit more as all the stories gradually resolve themselves.
It’s a really interesting way of telling a story and it’s also one that works perfectly well for the story – or stories – Annabel Giles tells. I don’t know if the idea for the plot or the narrative structure came first – often when the narrative structure is the first idea, it can be difficult finding a story to fit it and when the plot comes first, it can be equally difficult to shoehorn it all into something with such a rigid structure. But the two fit really well together.
I also like the characters. They’re all so completely different and in some ways they live in different worlds but the connections between the characters are still convincing. Scarlett can be a bit annoying (she’s a bit young and cute) but I really liked the other characters. Some people might find Sophie a bit weak, wet and embarrassing, Della certainly has her bitchy side, Constance seems a bit mad and Millicent, until you know the full story, can seem very stupid, desperate and a bit of a doormat, in a snobby sort of way (if you can imagine such a thing). As for Jessica, she is a bit of a sad wannabe and no-one in the book seems to like her.
But I really liked all of them. Even Scarlett isn’t that bad. Sophie is sweet and loving, and very brave in her way. Della’s determined independence is both admirable and moving because you can tell she’s hurting under the surface. Constance is quite mad but delightfully intrepid and with-it. Millicent is an amazing woman, with great strength, intelligence, courage and patience. And I had a lot of sympathy for Jessica, who finally has to accept she’s not a big star who’s loved by millions. It’s a very sad story and I always felt she was more a victim of circumstances than actually being a horrible person. It’s like being a star was all she knew how to do.
There are problems with the book. Sometimes the birthdays can end on a bit of a cliffhanger and you might never find out what happened next because the story has jumped forward a few months and while the event was hugely important at the time, it has paled into insignificance by then. Also the big final twist at the end was something I saw coming a mile off. I think if I’d worked it out very near the end, it might have had more impact but as it was, I had enough time to come to the conclusion that it was far too coincidental that things worked out as they did and it was a bit of a soap-opera moment and the book might have been stronger without it.
I did enjoy it though.
Monday, 18 October 2010
The Wedding Day (Catherine Alliott)***
Catherine Alliott is brilliant about writing comedies about rather stupid women and also brilliant at writing stories that really make you feel for the characters. But I’ve read three of her books now and all her characters seem fairly similar. The stupid heroine is in love with one man but then she meets another man who’s really horrible to her, then she starts having feelings for him instead. Actually, it’s the plot of pretty much any Mills & Boon although Alliott’s writing is a million times better than most Mills & Boon writers. So it is possible to read a number of books with exactly the same plot without getting fed up with it. But with this book, I found myself wishing for a bit of variation.
It’s not as though Alliott can’t do character. In this book especially, she has some great secondary characters. Annie, the central character, and her fiancé David might lack originality but David has a wonderfully mad and vague but terrifying and formidable aunt called Gertrude. Annie’s older sister Claire is always busy, bossy and competitive, just the sort of person I’d usually find really annoying but Alliott gives her a surprising vulnerability. The publisher who is interested in Annie’s book doesn’t appear in person but he’s a great character too. Then there are various friends and neighbours who are fascinating and amusing and Alliott takes the story off on endless twists and turns. And even when you know just where the story is going, she often throws in a surprise.
I also liked Annie’s ex-husband Adam. He does have a bit of a maturity problem (not to mention a fidelity problem) and you can’t blame Annie at all for leaving him - you actually kind of wonder why she didn’t do it sooner. But I did kind of feel he had some good qualities and I really wanted him to learn from his mistakes and end up happy, although maybe not with Annie. He was the first character in the book I really cared for and wanted to know more about. Some of the other major characters at that point seemed like lost causes and Adam didn’t… although I think Annie would argue with that.
Other characters however don’t quite work. Annie’s daughter Flora is a strange mixture of a stroppy teenager, a very young child and an adult. In some ways, this is completely realistic as everyone has different sides to their personality and there are times when you feel young and times when you feel old (not that I’ve ever felt old). But the different parts of Flora don’t quite form a coherent whole.
Annie, David, and Matt (Annie’s Other Man) don’t quite work for me either. The problem is that Annie is a bit unhinged. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit unhinged but I found it slightly worrying that she was getting married. She hardly seems to know David, she has little or no interest in the wedding (although she has somehow managed to convince herself she can’t wait) and seems to have no idea what she’s getting into. I felt as though I was older than her (she’s in her thirties so she’s much older than me) and that freaked me out a bit. I’m not used to going around feeling older than people. It always worries me to find someone, even in a book, who is considered a capable and responsible adult (unlike me) yet is obviously in need of someone to take care of them, be it temporarily or permanently. I really wanted to find Annie, look after her a bit and sort her head out. (Annie is probably now feeling very glad she doesn’t exist.)
This book also includes something I really hate to find in books. No, I don’t mean vomit although there is some and it wasn’t very nice but it could have been worse. What I also really hate is when one (or more) of the characters in the book is a writer and you have to read their work. Alliott makes us read some of Annie’s book. It is so cringe-makingly awful, it should probably be quite funny but the fact a publisher is interested in the book kind of spoils the effect. And there’s definitely a bit too much of it. But it is very cleverly done and there is a reason why Alliott makes you read it so I suppose she gets away with it.
David seemed like a perfectly lovely man but I didn’t really know what he was doing hanging around with this madwoman, let alone planning to marry her. He’s a doctor so I thought he must be setting himself up as her carer or something. Alliott does address this so she gets away with that too but it’s a good thing the book isn’t any longer. Towards the end of the book, you understand why Alliott has done certain things that just don’t make sense at first but until I found out why, I found these parts of the book very annoying.
As for Matt, he seems a little bit creepy. I can’t blame him for sneaking into Annie’s holiday home in the middle of the night, he did honestly think it was his holiday home. But shouting at Annie, getting her name wrong on purpose in insulting ways and trying to force her and her teenage daughter to leave the house immediately and go to an expensive hotel seems a bit much. Annie forgives him (she’s way too nice, she lets people walk all over her) but I still haven’t.
Alliott writes so well though, it was impossible not to become emotionally involved in the story, even though it took me a while and I might have given up on it if a) I didn’t have a blog or b) I didn’t know from experience that Alliott is such an emotionally involving writer. I wasn’t happy at all with the ending, it actually seemed completely wrong, if not dangerous and I really think Annie is in serious trouble. But if you ignore the last couple of chapters, the book would have a really exciting and interesting ending. The way Annie gets to know the characters in ways she hasn’t been able to before, the way she finds out about and comes face to face with their innermost secrets, the way she really does seem to learn from the experience and grow up a bit, made this book a (mostly) really moving and satisfying read.
It’s not as though Alliott can’t do character. In this book especially, she has some great secondary characters. Annie, the central character, and her fiancé David might lack originality but David has a wonderfully mad and vague but terrifying and formidable aunt called Gertrude. Annie’s older sister Claire is always busy, bossy and competitive, just the sort of person I’d usually find really annoying but Alliott gives her a surprising vulnerability. The publisher who is interested in Annie’s book doesn’t appear in person but he’s a great character too. Then there are various friends and neighbours who are fascinating and amusing and Alliott takes the story off on endless twists and turns. And even when you know just where the story is going, she often throws in a surprise.
I also liked Annie’s ex-husband Adam. He does have a bit of a maturity problem (not to mention a fidelity problem) and you can’t blame Annie at all for leaving him - you actually kind of wonder why she didn’t do it sooner. But I did kind of feel he had some good qualities and I really wanted him to learn from his mistakes and end up happy, although maybe not with Annie. He was the first character in the book I really cared for and wanted to know more about. Some of the other major characters at that point seemed like lost causes and Adam didn’t… although I think Annie would argue with that.
Other characters however don’t quite work. Annie’s daughter Flora is a strange mixture of a stroppy teenager, a very young child and an adult. In some ways, this is completely realistic as everyone has different sides to their personality and there are times when you feel young and times when you feel old (not that I’ve ever felt old). But the different parts of Flora don’t quite form a coherent whole.
Annie, David, and Matt (Annie’s Other Man) don’t quite work for me either. The problem is that Annie is a bit unhinged. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit unhinged but I found it slightly worrying that she was getting married. She hardly seems to know David, she has little or no interest in the wedding (although she has somehow managed to convince herself she can’t wait) and seems to have no idea what she’s getting into. I felt as though I was older than her (she’s in her thirties so she’s much older than me) and that freaked me out a bit. I’m not used to going around feeling older than people. It always worries me to find someone, even in a book, who is considered a capable and responsible adult (unlike me) yet is obviously in need of someone to take care of them, be it temporarily or permanently. I really wanted to find Annie, look after her a bit and sort her head out. (Annie is probably now feeling very glad she doesn’t exist.)
This book also includes something I really hate to find in books. No, I don’t mean vomit although there is some and it wasn’t very nice but it could have been worse. What I also really hate is when one (or more) of the characters in the book is a writer and you have to read their work. Alliott makes us read some of Annie’s book. It is so cringe-makingly awful, it should probably be quite funny but the fact a publisher is interested in the book kind of spoils the effect. And there’s definitely a bit too much of it. But it is very cleverly done and there is a reason why Alliott makes you read it so I suppose she gets away with it.
David seemed like a perfectly lovely man but I didn’t really know what he was doing hanging around with this madwoman, let alone planning to marry her. He’s a doctor so I thought he must be setting himself up as her carer or something. Alliott does address this so she gets away with that too but it’s a good thing the book isn’t any longer. Towards the end of the book, you understand why Alliott has done certain things that just don’t make sense at first but until I found out why, I found these parts of the book very annoying.
As for Matt, he seems a little bit creepy. I can’t blame him for sneaking into Annie’s holiday home in the middle of the night, he did honestly think it was his holiday home. But shouting at Annie, getting her name wrong on purpose in insulting ways and trying to force her and her teenage daughter to leave the house immediately and go to an expensive hotel seems a bit much. Annie forgives him (she’s way too nice, she lets people walk all over her) but I still haven’t.
Alliott writes so well though, it was impossible not to become emotionally involved in the story, even though it took me a while and I might have given up on it if a) I didn’t have a blog or b) I didn’t know from experience that Alliott is such an emotionally involving writer. I wasn’t happy at all with the ending, it actually seemed completely wrong, if not dangerous and I really think Annie is in serious trouble. But if you ignore the last couple of chapters, the book would have a really exciting and interesting ending. The way Annie gets to know the characters in ways she hasn’t been able to before, the way she finds out about and comes face to face with their innermost secrets, the way she really does seem to learn from the experience and grow up a bit, made this book a (mostly) really moving and satisfying read.
Sunday, 10 October 2010
On Chesil Beach (Iain McEwan)****
I hated Atonement so much, I was reluctant to give Ian McEwan another go. But he’s my boyfriend’s very favourite writer in the whole world (except me) so he told me I had to try On Chesil Beach because I’d love it. I was quite annoyed when he turns out to be right but at least it meant I didn’t have to suffer like I did with Atonement.
One of the things I hated about Atonement was that Ian McEwan copied bits from other sources. I don’t know if he’s done the same thing in On Chesil Beach or not but in a way I don’t want to know. I really enjoyed it and it will spoil it a bit if it turned out not to be an original work of fiction.
It certainly seemed original. It’s set in the fifties. Florence and Edward are on honeymoon. It’s their wedding night and they’re both virgins so they don’t know what to expect. Edward can’t wait (typical man) but Florence is a bit freaked out by the whole idea of it. It starts off with them eating their first meal alone as a married couple, then they go into the bedroom. Then we start seeing a series of flashbacks. We hear about the first time they encountered one another and the time when they finally met (these are not the same thing). We see how their relationship progressed from there and a bit about their contrasting home lives. We discover Florence went to music college to study the violin and Edward went to university and got into brawls.
The parts of the book set in the present (the wedding night) are told in chronological order but the rest is told in quite a random way. However it is very effective. The more you read, the more you unravel, the more things start to make sense. It’s only annoying when McEwan has left you at a very exciting point and then he goes off and talks about something else instead. But a lot of good authors do that.
Edward is a bit of a strange character. He turns out to be a very different character from how he seemed at the beginning of the book. He’s very polite and slightly reserved towards Florence so I thought he was quite a gentle sort of person. Then it turns out he likes getting into fights. Edward as a character is full of surprises but McEwan doesn’t reveal Edward’s character in an unrealistic way. I had no trouble believing he really was as he was being described. I wasn’t sure I liked him but I did find him very interesting.
Florence I identified with quite a lot. At first, I thought she was naturally nervous about her wedding night because she didn’t really know much about it but it turns out she is quite repulsed by the whole idea. I find this completely reasonable. I love my boyfriend and we’re very happy and, well, use your imagination, we have been together for nearly two years. But the idea of having his urinating apparatus inside me isn’t one that gets me particularly excited. And the thought of him… exploding all over me is a bit ewwww when you think about it. It’s not that I don’t get excited, it’s just I get more excited when he’s got his clothes on (or, well, my clothes on). So I really felt for Florence and McEwan described her feelings really well.
I liked the parts about music too. Often when people write about music you can tell whether they actually know anything about it or not. Like there was one book with a character who wanted to play a particular flute piece slowly. Reasonable in theory but that particular piece you have to play really fast because you can’t take breaths in the middle of the phrases. Then you get the occasional violin with frets and or a clarinet with a double reed which really does get on my nerves. (The violin does not have frets and the clarinet has a single reed.)
But I had no trouble with Florence’s being a really good, professional standard violinist. There weren’t many descriptions of it but there was nothing that stood out as ridiculous. Maybe she spent a bit more time practising her scales and arpeggios than she needed to – you do need to practise them a lot but you get to practise pieces too - but it wasn’t so much it was actually unbelievable. The descriptions of the Wigmore Hall were also excellent. It has been refurbished at least once since the book and the only place I’ve been backstage is the Green Room but it was mostly possible to imagine the Wigmore Hall, read the descriptions, know exactly what he was talking about and have no doubt that he really was talking about the Wigmore Hall.
Some of the sentences might have been just slightly longer than they needed to be but only if I’m being really fussy. I actually really liked McEwan’s use of language. It was sort of gentle, like the waves undulating near Chesil Beach. At the very start McEwan showed a slight inclination to sneer at his characters but after that he really seemed to be inside their heads rather than laughing and pointing.
There isn’t much dialogue. Most of it is descriptions. Usually this sort of thing annoys me as I love dialogue but this book seemed right without dialogue. It’s about two people who have a lot of thoughts, feelings and memories they haven’t shared – and to an extent can’t share - with one another. When a conversation is described, it’s not necessarily the words that are spoken that are the most important thing. So I really like the book as it is.
Chesil Beach is a fascinating location for a story but to an extent it’s wasted because Chesil Beach is one of the few places in the book that isn’t described in detail and also really the only part of the book where the words used in conversation become more important than the setting. There are probably many exciting stories that could be set on Chesil Beach and nowhere else but on Chesil Beach but the book On Chesil Beach could in theory have been set anywhere. There doesn’t even need to be a beach at all as far as I can see. Anywhere outdoors would do.
So in some ways I wish McEwan had set his story somewhere else as now I think writers will feel discouraged from using Chesil Beach as a setting even if they wrote a very different story because the book is so famous. But at the same time, Chesil Beach is an exciting, magical place and just the fact that it’s really there gives the story something extra.
One of the things I hated about Atonement was that Ian McEwan copied bits from other sources. I don’t know if he’s done the same thing in On Chesil Beach or not but in a way I don’t want to know. I really enjoyed it and it will spoil it a bit if it turned out not to be an original work of fiction.
It certainly seemed original. It’s set in the fifties. Florence and Edward are on honeymoon. It’s their wedding night and they’re both virgins so they don’t know what to expect. Edward can’t wait (typical man) but Florence is a bit freaked out by the whole idea of it. It starts off with them eating their first meal alone as a married couple, then they go into the bedroom. Then we start seeing a series of flashbacks. We hear about the first time they encountered one another and the time when they finally met (these are not the same thing). We see how their relationship progressed from there and a bit about their contrasting home lives. We discover Florence went to music college to study the violin and Edward went to university and got into brawls.
The parts of the book set in the present (the wedding night) are told in chronological order but the rest is told in quite a random way. However it is very effective. The more you read, the more you unravel, the more things start to make sense. It’s only annoying when McEwan has left you at a very exciting point and then he goes off and talks about something else instead. But a lot of good authors do that.
Edward is a bit of a strange character. He turns out to be a very different character from how he seemed at the beginning of the book. He’s very polite and slightly reserved towards Florence so I thought he was quite a gentle sort of person. Then it turns out he likes getting into fights. Edward as a character is full of surprises but McEwan doesn’t reveal Edward’s character in an unrealistic way. I had no trouble believing he really was as he was being described. I wasn’t sure I liked him but I did find him very interesting.
Florence I identified with quite a lot. At first, I thought she was naturally nervous about her wedding night because she didn’t really know much about it but it turns out she is quite repulsed by the whole idea. I find this completely reasonable. I love my boyfriend and we’re very happy and, well, use your imagination, we have been together for nearly two years. But the idea of having his urinating apparatus inside me isn’t one that gets me particularly excited. And the thought of him… exploding all over me is a bit ewwww when you think about it. It’s not that I don’t get excited, it’s just I get more excited when he’s got his clothes on (or, well, my clothes on). So I really felt for Florence and McEwan described her feelings really well.
I liked the parts about music too. Often when people write about music you can tell whether they actually know anything about it or not. Like there was one book with a character who wanted to play a particular flute piece slowly. Reasonable in theory but that particular piece you have to play really fast because you can’t take breaths in the middle of the phrases. Then you get the occasional violin with frets and or a clarinet with a double reed which really does get on my nerves. (The violin does not have frets and the clarinet has a single reed.)
But I had no trouble with Florence’s being a really good, professional standard violinist. There weren’t many descriptions of it but there was nothing that stood out as ridiculous. Maybe she spent a bit more time practising her scales and arpeggios than she needed to – you do need to practise them a lot but you get to practise pieces too - but it wasn’t so much it was actually unbelievable. The descriptions of the Wigmore Hall were also excellent. It has been refurbished at least once since the book and the only place I’ve been backstage is the Green Room but it was mostly possible to imagine the Wigmore Hall, read the descriptions, know exactly what he was talking about and have no doubt that he really was talking about the Wigmore Hall.
Some of the sentences might have been just slightly longer than they needed to be but only if I’m being really fussy. I actually really liked McEwan’s use of language. It was sort of gentle, like the waves undulating near Chesil Beach. At the very start McEwan showed a slight inclination to sneer at his characters but after that he really seemed to be inside their heads rather than laughing and pointing.
There isn’t much dialogue. Most of it is descriptions. Usually this sort of thing annoys me as I love dialogue but this book seemed right without dialogue. It’s about two people who have a lot of thoughts, feelings and memories they haven’t shared – and to an extent can’t share - with one another. When a conversation is described, it’s not necessarily the words that are spoken that are the most important thing. So I really like the book as it is.
Chesil Beach is a fascinating location for a story but to an extent it’s wasted because Chesil Beach is one of the few places in the book that isn’t described in detail and also really the only part of the book where the words used in conversation become more important than the setting. There are probably many exciting stories that could be set on Chesil Beach and nowhere else but on Chesil Beach but the book On Chesil Beach could in theory have been set anywhere. There doesn’t even need to be a beach at all as far as I can see. Anywhere outdoors would do.
So in some ways I wish McEwan had set his story somewhere else as now I think writers will feel discouraged from using Chesil Beach as a setting even if they wrote a very different story because the book is so famous. But at the same time, Chesil Beach is an exciting, magical place and just the fact that it’s really there gives the story something extra.
Friday, 1 October 2010
The Other Woman's Shoes (Adele Parks)*
Adele Parks is a very popular and successful writer so I was really expecting to enjoy this book. And, to be fair, I did enjoy the first page and a half. I absolutely loved the opening line. It wasn’t an especially witty or original or exciting line but it did mention the words ‘Earl’s Court station’ so naturally I was hooked.
I also quite liked the central character, Martha. True, she wasn’t enjoying being at the tube station, which immediately shows you she’s a completely different person from me but I could identify with the not liking stairs part. Also, getting stressed over going to the hairdresser's is exactly the sort of thing I’d get stressed over (if I ever went to the hairdresser’s) and I can definitely relate to not wanting to create a scene. Unfortunately with me, scenes get created all by themselves but I can understand Martha’s not wanting it.
The blurb tells you that sisters Martha and Eliza have split up from their partners and Martha wants fun and Eliza wants a husband. But I don’t think the blurb should have told you that. The blurb should really tell you about something that happens near the beginning of the book. The blurb is your taster, the thing you’re waiting for when you start to read the book. You don’t really want to be waiting half the book for it to happen.
It’s not until about halfway through that the blurb becomes even slightly true. Martha has no interest in fun for ages and even when she is she’s more interested in the provider of the fun than the enjoyment itself. As for Eliza, she never really at any point wants a husband. She does trawl through Martha’s address book in search of a suitable man but it seems to me that all she really wants is a shag.
But that’s a problem with the blurb and Parks probably isn’t responsible for that – although if there was enough excitement in the story leading up to these events, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what the blurb said.
One of the most important things for me in a book is the characters. I want to like them. At the very least, I want to be rooting for them. But that didn’t really happen. Martha got on my nerves so much and some of the things she does made me cringe with embarrassment. Usually, I don’t even notice when someone has done something embarrassing but seriously, I just wanted to shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see what the crazy woman was going to do next. I’d be lying if I said I’d never done anything embarrassing, everyone does it sometimes but Martha is (I hope) so much worse than me.
Martha is also completely self-obsessed. I accept that when your husband leaves you it’s probably a bit of a shock and you might well spend months weeping and wailing but after a while I stopped feeling sympathetic and I just wanted one of the other characters to shake her. The problem isn’t so much that she’s upset, that’s natural (although I’m sure she’s milking it at least a little bit) but Martha isn’t just upset, she stops showing even the smallest amount of consideration for anyone else.
I don’t usually mind when characters have emotional breakdowns. I actually rather like it. The feeling of being drawn into someone’s crisis can (at least when it’s fiction) makes very enthralling (if not strictly enjoyable) reading. I don’t mind too much when it happens in real life either. Most of the people I know have tried to kill themselves and I don’t get annoyed about that. With Martha, it just seems like self-indulgence and attention-seeking. There is no real sense of sadness in Martha’s words or actions – my sympathy was for the poor people who have to put up with her.
Even when Martha meets Jack and starts having wild sex with him, she doesn’t change. She’s still needy and demanding. I don’t blame Eliza for being convinced that Jack’s just with her for the sex. The way she behaves with Jack is so embarrassing at times, it actually hurts (I don’t see what was wrong with the Crunchie though) but it’s the way she treats Eliza that really bothers me.
Eliza, like Martha, has just lost a long-term partner, Greg. But whilst Michael has (perhaps understandably!) walked out on Martha, Eliza has taken the decision to leave herself. So she goes to her sister Martha’s house, discovers Michael has walked out and has to spend the next few months looking after Martha and her children. Martha doesn’t even consider that Eliza might be upset too and Eliza just has to push her own feelings aside and pretend everything’s fine.
Just because Eliza wanted to leave, it doesn’t mean she’s not going to be hurting. She probably did love Greg at one stage, even if she doesn’t now so she’s still lost someone she loved. And even if she’s completely happy to have left him, her life will still have changed quite a lot. That must be a lot to cope with even if you don’t have to start babysitting your sister, not to mention your niece and nephew. Maybe Martha’s problems serve as a timely distraction for Eliza but Martha really doesn’t give her much choice in the matter. Martha comes first and it seems as though she feels Eliza’s problems don’t matter. (She does kind of realise quite near the end that maybe she’s been a bit selfish but it’s a bit late by then.)
Eliza isn’t as bad as Martha. She does seem to be a very kind and patient person. But to a great extent, she’s hardly in the book. You don’t get much sense of her personality except what other people tell you. Eliza is just Martha’s live-in babysitter with almost no life of her own. Either she’s comforting Martha or she’s trying to shag one of Martha’s friends. It’s not much of a storyline.
I do like Martha’s boyfriend Jack though. He seems like a really nice, kind guy but at the same time he isn’t a total drip. Which is a shame in a way because I do like my drips but it’s not me who has to sleep with him. I can believe a lot of women would love him as he is. He’s a bit of an unrealistic character but it’s not completely impossible there are men in the world like him. Unlike Eliza, I got the impression he actually like Martha as a person – although fuck knows why.
Then there’s the dialogue. When something bad happens in real life, I think a lot of people start talking in clichés because they’re really struggling to put their thoughts into words. But when people start talking in clichés in a book or on TV it can just end up being really funny and that spoils the atmosphere a bit. Parks’ dialogue reads like EastEnders. To begin with, I didn’t mind it so much as it was making me laugh but after a while it stopped being funny and just became annoying.
The dialogue wasn’t the biggest problem though - a lot of the time there wasn’t any dialogue. Sometimes Parks will just tell you what happened without getting into all the details of what could have been a very interesting conversation. There are also a lot of anecdotes about past events which is fine in moderation but when it happens a lot, it gets in the way of the story. She’s also one of those writers who tells you what you’re supposed to think of each character. I’d rather make up my own mind really but to be fair she does say some things I agree with. I don’t agree that Martha is a wonderful, lovely, giving, kind person but I can’t argue when Parks says she’s being embarrassing.
The book also seemed to try a bit too hard to mislead the readers. It’s fine to disguise a situation a bit, for the author to describe in a way that makes you think one thing when the truth it something different. But Parks doesn’t just hint, she tells you fairly directly what’s going on, only to contradict herself later on. Sometimes I actually found I was reading back, wondering if I was going mad or something. Instead of thinking ‘oh, of course that’s how it is’ I was thinking ‘That’s not what you said before, look’.
I won’t say too much about the ending. Not that I especially want to encourage anyone to read this book but all I’ll say is that if I’d liked the characters, the ending Parks chose would have been the ending I wanted most. But that doesn’t make it the right one. In the short-term, it’s satisfying but in the long-term, I think they’re heading for divorce.
But finally, I must say something about the title. It implies a sort of role-swap for Martha and Eliza but that is another thing that never really takes place. Martha starts going out clubbing (yes, at her age!) but this isn’t so much Martha turning into Eliza as Martha trying to be her teenage self. Eliza does end up doing some of Martha’s motherly duties but that’s only because they’re pretty much forced on her.
I’m sure there are some good things about this book but the only times I weren’t bored were when I was really annoyed.
I also quite liked the central character, Martha. True, she wasn’t enjoying being at the tube station, which immediately shows you she’s a completely different person from me but I could identify with the not liking stairs part. Also, getting stressed over going to the hairdresser's is exactly the sort of thing I’d get stressed over (if I ever went to the hairdresser’s) and I can definitely relate to not wanting to create a scene. Unfortunately with me, scenes get created all by themselves but I can understand Martha’s not wanting it.
The blurb tells you that sisters Martha and Eliza have split up from their partners and Martha wants fun and Eliza wants a husband. But I don’t think the blurb should have told you that. The blurb should really tell you about something that happens near the beginning of the book. The blurb is your taster, the thing you’re waiting for when you start to read the book. You don’t really want to be waiting half the book for it to happen.
It’s not until about halfway through that the blurb becomes even slightly true. Martha has no interest in fun for ages and even when she is she’s more interested in the provider of the fun than the enjoyment itself. As for Eliza, she never really at any point wants a husband. She does trawl through Martha’s address book in search of a suitable man but it seems to me that all she really wants is a shag.
But that’s a problem with the blurb and Parks probably isn’t responsible for that – although if there was enough excitement in the story leading up to these events, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what the blurb said.
One of the most important things for me in a book is the characters. I want to like them. At the very least, I want to be rooting for them. But that didn’t really happen. Martha got on my nerves so much and some of the things she does made me cringe with embarrassment. Usually, I don’t even notice when someone has done something embarrassing but seriously, I just wanted to shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see what the crazy woman was going to do next. I’d be lying if I said I’d never done anything embarrassing, everyone does it sometimes but Martha is (I hope) so much worse than me.
Martha is also completely self-obsessed. I accept that when your husband leaves you it’s probably a bit of a shock and you might well spend months weeping and wailing but after a while I stopped feeling sympathetic and I just wanted one of the other characters to shake her. The problem isn’t so much that she’s upset, that’s natural (although I’m sure she’s milking it at least a little bit) but Martha isn’t just upset, she stops showing even the smallest amount of consideration for anyone else.
I don’t usually mind when characters have emotional breakdowns. I actually rather like it. The feeling of being drawn into someone’s crisis can (at least when it’s fiction) makes very enthralling (if not strictly enjoyable) reading. I don’t mind too much when it happens in real life either. Most of the people I know have tried to kill themselves and I don’t get annoyed about that. With Martha, it just seems like self-indulgence and attention-seeking. There is no real sense of sadness in Martha’s words or actions – my sympathy was for the poor people who have to put up with her.
Even when Martha meets Jack and starts having wild sex with him, she doesn’t change. She’s still needy and demanding. I don’t blame Eliza for being convinced that Jack’s just with her for the sex. The way she behaves with Jack is so embarrassing at times, it actually hurts (I don’t see what was wrong with the Crunchie though) but it’s the way she treats Eliza that really bothers me.
Eliza, like Martha, has just lost a long-term partner, Greg. But whilst Michael has (perhaps understandably!) walked out on Martha, Eliza has taken the decision to leave herself. So she goes to her sister Martha’s house, discovers Michael has walked out and has to spend the next few months looking after Martha and her children. Martha doesn’t even consider that Eliza might be upset too and Eliza just has to push her own feelings aside and pretend everything’s fine.
Just because Eliza wanted to leave, it doesn’t mean she’s not going to be hurting. She probably did love Greg at one stage, even if she doesn’t now so she’s still lost someone she loved. And even if she’s completely happy to have left him, her life will still have changed quite a lot. That must be a lot to cope with even if you don’t have to start babysitting your sister, not to mention your niece and nephew. Maybe Martha’s problems serve as a timely distraction for Eliza but Martha really doesn’t give her much choice in the matter. Martha comes first and it seems as though she feels Eliza’s problems don’t matter. (She does kind of realise quite near the end that maybe she’s been a bit selfish but it’s a bit late by then.)
Eliza isn’t as bad as Martha. She does seem to be a very kind and patient person. But to a great extent, she’s hardly in the book. You don’t get much sense of her personality except what other people tell you. Eliza is just Martha’s live-in babysitter with almost no life of her own. Either she’s comforting Martha or she’s trying to shag one of Martha’s friends. It’s not much of a storyline.
I do like Martha’s boyfriend Jack though. He seems like a really nice, kind guy but at the same time he isn’t a total drip. Which is a shame in a way because I do like my drips but it’s not me who has to sleep with him. I can believe a lot of women would love him as he is. He’s a bit of an unrealistic character but it’s not completely impossible there are men in the world like him. Unlike Eliza, I got the impression he actually like Martha as a person – although fuck knows why.
Then there’s the dialogue. When something bad happens in real life, I think a lot of people start talking in clichés because they’re really struggling to put their thoughts into words. But when people start talking in clichés in a book or on TV it can just end up being really funny and that spoils the atmosphere a bit. Parks’ dialogue reads like EastEnders. To begin with, I didn’t mind it so much as it was making me laugh but after a while it stopped being funny and just became annoying.
The dialogue wasn’t the biggest problem though - a lot of the time there wasn’t any dialogue. Sometimes Parks will just tell you what happened without getting into all the details of what could have been a very interesting conversation. There are also a lot of anecdotes about past events which is fine in moderation but when it happens a lot, it gets in the way of the story. She’s also one of those writers who tells you what you’re supposed to think of each character. I’d rather make up my own mind really but to be fair she does say some things I agree with. I don’t agree that Martha is a wonderful, lovely, giving, kind person but I can’t argue when Parks says she’s being embarrassing.
The book also seemed to try a bit too hard to mislead the readers. It’s fine to disguise a situation a bit, for the author to describe in a way that makes you think one thing when the truth it something different. But Parks doesn’t just hint, she tells you fairly directly what’s going on, only to contradict herself later on. Sometimes I actually found I was reading back, wondering if I was going mad or something. Instead of thinking ‘oh, of course that’s how it is’ I was thinking ‘That’s not what you said before, look’.
I won’t say too much about the ending. Not that I especially want to encourage anyone to read this book but all I’ll say is that if I’d liked the characters, the ending Parks chose would have been the ending I wanted most. But that doesn’t make it the right one. In the short-term, it’s satisfying but in the long-term, I think they’re heading for divorce.
But finally, I must say something about the title. It implies a sort of role-swap for Martha and Eliza but that is another thing that never really takes place. Martha starts going out clubbing (yes, at her age!) but this isn’t so much Martha turning into Eliza as Martha trying to be her teenage self. Eliza does end up doing some of Martha’s motherly duties but that’s only because they’re pretty much forced on her.
I’m sure there are some good things about this book but the only times I weren’t bored were when I was really annoyed.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Girl with a One Track Mind (Abby Lee)***
Abby Lee is obsessed with sex. Completely and utterly obsessed. She can’t even look at a man without thinking about his cock. Sometimes catching a sight of her naked reflection in a mirror is enough to turn her on because she can’t help imagining what it would be like if there was a naked man with her.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls being obsessed with sex. Whatever makes you happy. Except she’s not happy because she’s not getting enough sex. There’s nothing wrong with it though. And good for her for being so honest about what she wants.
You could call Abby a tart with a heart – but that wouldn’t tell you very much. Besides, I don’t think she is a tart. Maybe I’m wrong but for me tartiness suggests an element of unnaturalness. More about being seen as someone who has lots of sex rather than a desire actually to have it. Abby is one of the most completely natural people I’ve ever known of and the more you read, the more you see how much more there is to her than sex.
She is also an incredibly nice person. She’s caring, a good friend, and while sex is very high on her List of Important Things to Do, she does care about personality too and she isn’t so completely desperate she’d consider shagging either her best friend’s boyfriend or one of the random tossers who notices she has breasts and feel compelled to point them out.
She can even talk about how intelligent she is without making me want to throw the book across the room. Because she is intelligent, without a doubt. Extremely intelligent. And I worked that out long before she talked about her college grades. Maybe she doesn’t always know what she wants but as soon as she realises she doesn’t know what she wants, she starts using her brain to work out how to get it. Amazing woman. And I’m not just talking about her ability to have constant multiple orgasms although that is undoubtedly amazing too. (I don’t think I’ll ever look at Holloway Road in quite the same way again.)
Lee is a fantastic writer. She’s witty and self-deprecating and she has a lovely turn of phrase. It’s quite amazing how she can describe sex and masturbation and penises and nipples (male and female) in so many different ways and (at least for a while) keep it interesting. As well as writing a thoroughly amusing diary, the book is also interspersed with Comparisons between Big and Small Cocks, and guides for How to Behave at One-Night Stands and What Not to Do if you See a Girl in a Sex Shop. All useful stuff and she makes it funny.
I was a bit surprised though to realise she’d reached her thirties without going to a sex party, experiencing S&M or even kissing a girl. Even I’ve been to a sex party and been chained to the wall as a man kissed me (and I do mean just kissing) and I’m quite innocent really. As for kissing a girl, I’d be lying if I said I’d never done that. Once in a while a girl just jumps on me and as most of them were a little bit mad (well they’d have to be really!) it wouldn’t be a good idea to stop them even if I’d wanted to.
But when you think about it, Abby devotes so much of her life to sex already. It’s hardly surprising really if she hasn’t had the time to be bend backwards over a pommel horse and be soundly whipped (I have bent back over one with my clothes on but I kept hold of the whip and no I didn’t use it on myself, I don’t think self-harming is a very good idea). Why try something new that might be crap when she could be doing her favourite thing in the whole world?
But she literally does spend almost the whole book writing about sex (whether it’s with a man, a woman, one of each, a whole group or with herself) and once you’ve read 20 pages at a time it gets a little bit boring. Get a hobby, woman. Another one, I mean.
And really, anyone who spends quite that much time with soaking wet knickers, for whatever reason, really should consider incontinence pads.
Warning: don’t read this when you’re trying to eat breakfast. If there is one oral activity I love it’s eating and nothing kills the appetite like a pair of wet knickers.
I still love Abby though. I can’t help it, she’s just so lovely. Not to mention sexy. And I bet she’s helped a lot of randy girls to feel a lot more normal.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls being obsessed with sex. Whatever makes you happy. Except she’s not happy because she’s not getting enough sex. There’s nothing wrong with it though. And good for her for being so honest about what she wants.
You could call Abby a tart with a heart – but that wouldn’t tell you very much. Besides, I don’t think she is a tart. Maybe I’m wrong but for me tartiness suggests an element of unnaturalness. More about being seen as someone who has lots of sex rather than a desire actually to have it. Abby is one of the most completely natural people I’ve ever known of and the more you read, the more you see how much more there is to her than sex.
She is also an incredibly nice person. She’s caring, a good friend, and while sex is very high on her List of Important Things to Do, she does care about personality too and she isn’t so completely desperate she’d consider shagging either her best friend’s boyfriend or one of the random tossers who notices she has breasts and feel compelled to point them out.
She can even talk about how intelligent she is without making me want to throw the book across the room. Because she is intelligent, without a doubt. Extremely intelligent. And I worked that out long before she talked about her college grades. Maybe she doesn’t always know what she wants but as soon as she realises she doesn’t know what she wants, she starts using her brain to work out how to get it. Amazing woman. And I’m not just talking about her ability to have constant multiple orgasms although that is undoubtedly amazing too. (I don’t think I’ll ever look at Holloway Road in quite the same way again.)
Lee is a fantastic writer. She’s witty and self-deprecating and she has a lovely turn of phrase. It’s quite amazing how she can describe sex and masturbation and penises and nipples (male and female) in so many different ways and (at least for a while) keep it interesting. As well as writing a thoroughly amusing diary, the book is also interspersed with Comparisons between Big and Small Cocks, and guides for How to Behave at One-Night Stands and What Not to Do if you See a Girl in a Sex Shop. All useful stuff and she makes it funny.
I was a bit surprised though to realise she’d reached her thirties without going to a sex party, experiencing S&M or even kissing a girl. Even I’ve been to a sex party and been chained to the wall as a man kissed me (and I do mean just kissing) and I’m quite innocent really. As for kissing a girl, I’d be lying if I said I’d never done that. Once in a while a girl just jumps on me and as most of them were a little bit mad (well they’d have to be really!) it wouldn’t be a good idea to stop them even if I’d wanted to.
But when you think about it, Abby devotes so much of her life to sex already. It’s hardly surprising really if she hasn’t had the time to be bend backwards over a pommel horse and be soundly whipped (I have bent back over one with my clothes on but I kept hold of the whip and no I didn’t use it on myself, I don’t think self-harming is a very good idea). Why try something new that might be crap when she could be doing her favourite thing in the whole world?
But she literally does spend almost the whole book writing about sex (whether it’s with a man, a woman, one of each, a whole group or with herself) and once you’ve read 20 pages at a time it gets a little bit boring. Get a hobby, woman. Another one, I mean.
And really, anyone who spends quite that much time with soaking wet knickers, for whatever reason, really should consider incontinence pads.
Warning: don’t read this when you’re trying to eat breakfast. If there is one oral activity I love it’s eating and nothing kills the appetite like a pair of wet knickers.
I still love Abby though. I can’t help it, she’s just so lovely. Not to mention sexy. And I bet she’s helped a lot of randy girls to feel a lot more normal.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Jelleyman's Thrown a Wobbly (Jeff Stelling)***
I actually bought this book for my boyfriend but he was working on Christmas Day (I’m not sure whether to write LMAO or AWWW but I’ll go for AWWW because I do like him quite a lot) so I started reading it and then I wouldn’t give it back to him for ages because I enjoyed it so much. It’s not a brilliant book in that it’s probably not going to appeal to people who aren’t football fans or those who don’t have the right sense of humour to appreciate the book’s comedy. But if you’re a football fan and you like jokes that are often dirty (both of which definitely apply to me), this is probably a very good book to read.
It’s not all dirty jokes. As the title suggests, most of the jokes are based on words and language rather than schoolboy sniggering. But unfortunately, there’s so much football in the book, so many incidents of grown men behaving like (extremely funny) teenage boys, this isn’t the sort of book I’d recommend to my mum, even though she really likes linguistic jokes as a rule.
And I love the way the ‘Jelleyman’ in the title of the book just happens to be Welsh footballer Gareth Jelleyman. So it actually took me a while for me to realise the connection between ‘Jelleyman’ and ‘wobbly’ because I was so excited about a Welsh footballer having his name in the title of a book. But I got it in the end.
I do have to make one big major criticism of something Jeff Stelling says at the start. The book is based on a show called Soccer Saturday, in which he and several other panellists watch football matches and when appropriate they shout and groan and try not to swear based on what they’re watching. Whenever there’s a key moment in a game, Stelling asks the relevant panellist to give a report on it. Only, you never get to see the matches – you just get to hear reactions and analysis.
Stelling says that someone who has never seen Soccer Saturday won’t appreciate the book. And this, I’m afraid, Jeff, is a load of bollocks. I have never seen Soccer Saturday in my whole life and I found the book not only comprehensible but hilarious. What’s more, I really want to watch Soccer Saturday and the only reason I don’t watch anything on Sky Sports is because my parents don’t have it. I could get it if I paid for it but it will probably take quite a lot out of my £70 a week. So maybe I’ll stick to Match of the Day, The Football League Show and Late Kick-Off, which have most of the good bits on and don’t require you to pay anything extra.
Being ignorant of Soccer Saturday was not however completely without its disadvantages. In some ways I’d have liked it if the book had taken a more chronological format. This would have given me more of an idea about how the series has progressed over time, which panellists were around at the same time, what the football situation was at that time, things like that. But on the other hand, as Stelling devotes a chapter to each regular panellist (including the ones that aren’t regular anymore), you really get the opportunity to get to know them all a little bit. And that might not have happened to the same extent if it had been chronological and all the anecdotes about them had been dotted about all over the book. But that small quibble certainly didn’t stop me from enjoying the book very much.
I would like to give it more than three stars. In terms of enjoyment it deserves more than that but I do feel this is a hilariously fun book rather than a great piece of writing. But maybe it would seem great if it was printed in a more conventional typeface. Certain fonts just look amateur which probably lowers my opinion of the writing because it’s less easy to read. And it probably would do even if it was used for Pride and Prejudice so Jeff Stelling didn’t have much of a chance.
It’s not all dirty jokes. As the title suggests, most of the jokes are based on words and language rather than schoolboy sniggering. But unfortunately, there’s so much football in the book, so many incidents of grown men behaving like (extremely funny) teenage boys, this isn’t the sort of book I’d recommend to my mum, even though she really likes linguistic jokes as a rule.
And I love the way the ‘Jelleyman’ in the title of the book just happens to be Welsh footballer Gareth Jelleyman. So it actually took me a while for me to realise the connection between ‘Jelleyman’ and ‘wobbly’ because I was so excited about a Welsh footballer having his name in the title of a book. But I got it in the end.
I do have to make one big major criticism of something Jeff Stelling says at the start. The book is based on a show called Soccer Saturday, in which he and several other panellists watch football matches and when appropriate they shout and groan and try not to swear based on what they’re watching. Whenever there’s a key moment in a game, Stelling asks the relevant panellist to give a report on it. Only, you never get to see the matches – you just get to hear reactions and analysis.
Stelling says that someone who has never seen Soccer Saturday won’t appreciate the book. And this, I’m afraid, Jeff, is a load of bollocks. I have never seen Soccer Saturday in my whole life and I found the book not only comprehensible but hilarious. What’s more, I really want to watch Soccer Saturday and the only reason I don’t watch anything on Sky Sports is because my parents don’t have it. I could get it if I paid for it but it will probably take quite a lot out of my £70 a week. So maybe I’ll stick to Match of the Day, The Football League Show and Late Kick-Off, which have most of the good bits on and don’t require you to pay anything extra.
Being ignorant of Soccer Saturday was not however completely without its disadvantages. In some ways I’d have liked it if the book had taken a more chronological format. This would have given me more of an idea about how the series has progressed over time, which panellists were around at the same time, what the football situation was at that time, things like that. But on the other hand, as Stelling devotes a chapter to each regular panellist (including the ones that aren’t regular anymore), you really get the opportunity to get to know them all a little bit. And that might not have happened to the same extent if it had been chronological and all the anecdotes about them had been dotted about all over the book. But that small quibble certainly didn’t stop me from enjoying the book very much.
I would like to give it more than three stars. In terms of enjoyment it deserves more than that but I do feel this is a hilariously fun book rather than a great piece of writing. But maybe it would seem great if it was printed in a more conventional typeface. Certain fonts just look amateur which probably lowers my opinion of the writing because it’s less easy to read. And it probably would do even if it was used for Pride and Prejudice so Jeff Stelling didn’t have much of a chance.
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