How to Kill Your Husband (And Other Handy Household Hints) (Kathy Lette)*

Poor, poor Cassie. Her husband Rory has left her for their marriage therapist Bianca, and her boss doesn’t think she’s suited to the Deputy Head’s position. Her best friend Jazz’s husband isn’t being terribly faithful either. So Cassie deserves a bit of sympathy, doesn’t she?

No. None at all. Cassie is irritating and neurotic. Rory really is better off even with the sexually free and deeply unprofessional Bianca. As for the Deputy Head position, it’s difficult to imagine anyone less suitable than Cassie. Yes, her rival, Priscilla, is a snide cow. Definitely. But at least you know she’ll work hard and get the job done. Cassie doesn’t treat either her job or her colleagues with respect, and it’s difficult to believe she cares for anyone apart from herself. Even if she really is as useless as she appears to be, she’s not nearly responsible enough for a teaching job. There’s no way I’d want her looking after my children. And my children would be used to incompetent adults because they’d have me.

Jazz isn’t much better. She’s just a whiny, bitchy, horrible person. I don’t blame her husband one bit for leaving her. If I was her husband, the book would probably be called How to Kill Your Wife. (Or maybe How to Kill Your Stalker because I wouldn’t marry her if you offered me free books at Waterstones for the rest of my life. Not that I’d kill her really. That’s just a joke.) Jazz is supposed to be terribly beautiful and a ‘domestic goddess’ (what does that mean anyway?), but I’m not going to start liking someone just because her best friend tells me she’s beautiful. I’m more interested in their personalities. And Jazz’ (or Jasmine’s: Kathy Lette has a tendency to use Jasmine’s full name when denoting a possessive) personality is pretty much nonexistent. There’s just enough unpleasantness on the surface to make you wish someone would come along and kill her, but there’s nothing underneath. She’s so shallow I would call her plastic, but she doesn’t have enough substance to be plastic. Jazz is cardboard.

Their freaky friend Hannah is actually quite interesting at times, but she’s not that nice either. She’d have been great as the sharp, slightly bitchy best friend if Cassie and Jazz had been likeable. Sometimes Hannah can be quite witty, and she is probably an original character as far as the world of chick lit goes. Most chick litty career women end up domesticated, so it’s always nice to read about one who doesn’t, and doesn’t want to be. But Hannah still isn’t nice enough to hold my interest. And I’m surprised she isn’t the one who ended up murdered: if she’d said ‘dah-ling’ one more time I think I’d have screamed.

Bianca is a mixture of the therapist cliché and the typical husband stealer. She’s a bit one-dimensional, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered if the rest had all been properly characterised. She is very funny. The best character in the book is Rory – he’s as useless as Cassie, but he’s quite amusing sometimes. He’s someone who could possibly exist. And you’ve got to admire him really. The poor guy’s married to Cassie, and he’s only had one affair. He’s incredible.

But the main problem with How to Kill Your Husband is that it’s chronically unfunny. It was clearly supposed to be a comedy: the dialogue is fast and snappy, and the characters’ conversations take turns you wouldn’t expect. Lette sets up her sentences and paragraphs as though she’s leading up to a very clever and funny joke – but the jokes never seem to come. There were times when I could see where the jokes were supposed to be, but somehow this book didn’t suit my sense of humour at all. It’s supposed to be the way women talk when there aren’t any men around. If this is true, I’m very glad that most of my friends are men.

And as for the murder – could it be any more ridiculous? To be fair, it is possible to write about a crime that doesn’t work and still create a thrilling piece of literature - Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance might not be the most realistic book in the world, but it’s beautifully written, and her characters are a million times more appealing than Lette’s. (Yes, most of Sophie Hannah’s characters are criminals, and even the nicer ones probably ought to be locked up for one reason or another. But Hurting Distance is an involving, intriguing and impressive book. How to Kill Your Husband isn’t.) Lette apparently is very popular, but the best thing about this book is that it’s quite short. And (as I got it 3for2) it was technically free.