Number 49- What we talk about when we talk about love- Raymond Carver

 

Apparently this is a classic collection of short stories. I know it's what made Carver's name on his side of the Atlantic, but I'm not sure I agree with the general adulation this collection seems to attract.

For me, a good short story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

With few exceptions, this is a collection of middles. 

We're dropped into the middle of a situation (with varying degrees of interestingness) and after a few pages, Carver stops writing and moves onto the next.

None of the contents of the book are badly written.  I do like the spare prose style. there isn't a wasted word in the book.  However, there are no particular bon mots or truly memorable events.  

There are several very nice character studies.  He manages to build the characters very efficiently. They seemed quite real as I was reading each story.  The dialogue always felt natural and unforced.  It's a shame they were never particularly memorable.

I finished this book last week and I struggle to remember what most of the stories were about from the titles. It's not a good sign when they've faded so completely from my memory in such a short time. I cannot recall any plot detail for most of the contents of the book. 

 

There are two stories that I thought did have full set of beginning, middle and end and they are also the stories that stuck with me the most.

Tell the Women We're Going is a disturbing vignette. It has a particularly subtle way of telling a very unsubtle story.  He builds tension beautifully in the second half of the story. The last line of the story is a masterpiece of understated brutality.

Similarly, Popular Mechanics has a last line that hits hard in a backhanded way.  In just three pages he gives us a deeply shocking and disturbing story. this is the story that has stuck with me most from the collection.

I don't think this is a BAD collection of stories.  I've read far far worse, and as I said, I like the prose. I just found it overall a little underwhelming and forgettable. It subceeded my expectations by quite a distance. I might try more Carver in future.  He won't be very high on the TBR pile though.

Number 48- King Sorrow- Joe Hill

This was a NetGalley ARC read in exchange for a fair review.

Joe hill continues the family tradition of the 900 plus page horror blockbuster doorstop. 

And he does it in style.  

When Arthur Oakes falls foul of a local group of drug dealers, he is forced to steal rare and valuable items from the university library. After he steals a rare arcane volume on mythical creatures, a group of his university friends band together to help him. In the process, they drunkenly (and druggedly if that is a word) release a deadly force on the world in the shape of King Sorrow, a dragon from the Long Dark who will do their bidding.  

The Dragon sorts out their issue, but the following year he returns and forces them to choose another victim.  They will have to choose victims every year unless they can find a way to rid themselves of the beast.

This is very firmly set in his father's universe.  Early on, two characters argue about whether Greg Stillson was using a baby as a human shield, or trying to save it from the gunman Johnny Smith.  There is also a not very subtle nod to the Dark Tower series in the summoning chapters.

The story is epic in scope, with a story spanning several decades and two continents.  At times it feels a little episodic, but all the plot threads do interweave. enough that by the end it was no longer an issue. 

there are plot twists and shocks, and every time you think you have the hang of where the story is going, Hill pulls the rug out from under you again. With 100 pages to go, I had no idea who might still be alive for the finale. 

Some of the set pieces are positively cinematic. particularly the sequence on the plane. King Sorrow himself is a wonderful creation, a Faustian bargainer and an utterly terrifyingly powerful beast. 

This might be Hill's masterpiece.  At no point in the 900 pages did the story seem to drag.  Even the first 90 pages which were mainly scene setting for the arrival of the eponymous evil are steeped in dread, with human villains every bit as scary as what was to follow.

With some sly humour weaved into the narrative, this is an almost flawless book.  If I had to pick a fault it would be that he refers to the twins as identical at one point, when one is male and the other female. But in the scheme of things, that's almost an irrelevance.

This is released properly next month and I will definitely be snagging myself a physical copy.  And you all need to do so as well- because I told you to.

Number 47- Grace - A.M. Shine

 

My regular readers out there will know that I am a big fan of AM Shine, even if I do get frustrated with some of his endings.

This was a NetGalley review copy of his new book, due out in October. 

This time around the horror is on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland - the Isle of Croaghnakeela- henceforth referred to as IoC.  I'm not typing that out more than once.

The eponymous Grace runs a rare book shop on the Irish mainland.  When she receives a phone call from a Catholic priest (Father Richard) on the IoC to tell her that her birth mother has died and left her her house, she drops everything to travel over to find out about her past.  She was adopted as an infant and has never known about her birth family.

Of course, the island has more than its fair share of secrets, some of them deadly, and these were the reason that her mother gave her up. When she returns to the island, it allows an old evil to rise up once more, breaking the stalemate that has existed on the island for the past 30 years.

As usual with Shine, this is incredibly atmospheric and has a number of twists and turns in the plot.  I thought one of them was sprung from left field until I realised he'd been dropping hints the whole time and, actually, this was one of the best hidden in plain sight plot twists I've seen for a good long while.

The monster at the heart of the story is truly terrifying.  It appears that Irish folklore has a lot of untapped horror potential, and AM Shine is an expert at mining those seams.

This is the least predictable of his books so far.  Before the book is halfway through, just when I thought I knew what was coming, the narrative moved in a wholly unforeseeable direction and never looked back. The second half of this book barely lets up the tension.  Some of the set pieces are among the scariest bits of writing I've seen outside of an Adam Nevill novel.

At a brief 221 pages, this packs in more atmosphere than a lot of books three times the length. The picture he paints of the island is so intense you can feel the fog creeping around you as you read it. The islanders are all well drawn characters and we understand their flaws and their actions.  

With horror ranging from the deeply personal to almost cosmic, and a truly terrifying creature at the heart of it all, this is island horror at its best.   (Is island horror a separate subgenre?  If it isn't, it probably should be.)

An easy 8.5/10.  I will definitely be buying a physical copy when it is released properly.

Number 46- Daisy Jones and the Six- Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

After 200 pages of walls of text with no paragraph breaks in the last book I read, the format of this book was a blessed relief.

This is written as snipets from interviews pieced together into a coherent story about the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac style rock band in the 60s and 70s.

Like a talking heads style documentary, the character name would be followed by mostly single paragraphs talking about the events under discussion at the time. Occasionally, someone would have a whole page talking about how they felt or why they did something, but it was rare.  There were frequent interjections of single short sentences.

The plot is slim. It's a rock and roll memoir from the POV of all the band members, management and their significant others. We know from the start that this is going to be a rise and fall story and the reasons for the fall are all too visible in the rise.

I thought this was a real page turner.  I read the whole thing in a matter of three days or so. It's fast paced, brilliantly evocative of the era and totally convincing.

The contradictory voices are a great way of suggesting deeper stories hidden below the surface and the character's truths hidden somewhere between what they actually say.

Daisy and Billy are a great pair of central characters and, as much as I hate will-they-won't-they narratives normally, I was invested in this one.

This is also the first time I've been able to listen to the soundtrack of a book as i read it.  The music from the TV series was released as the Aurora album that we read about. It's noticeable that the lyrics are quite different in the actual songs but I really quite enjoyed it. I normally like heavier fare, but this was a genuinely good album.  I probably need to watch the tv show now to see if the changes for tv explain the different emphasis in the lyrics.

Highly recommended.

Number 45- Satantango - Lazlo Krasznahorkai

 

This was a DNF for several reasons.

The main one is that after 200 pages I still had no inkling of any type of story and there has been at most 500 sentences in all those pages.  Very few pages had more than three very long run on sentences.

There were no paragraph breaks, just massive walls of text on every page. It was wearying to try to read it.

I never realised how much paragraphs improve the reading experience.  I can thank this book for that insight but not much more.

The plot seemed to centre around a bunch of very similar characters in a village and someone they thought was dead returning to said village for reasons too buried in walls of text to be interesting.

Apparently there is a film of this book that's 8 hours long with verrrrrryyyyyy long sloooowwww shots.  that's exactly what this felt like.

Not a fan.

Number 44- Fever Beach- Carl Hiaasen

 

Florida's greatest satirist returns with one of his most polemical novels to date. I can't imagine any Trump supporters reading this and enjoying it.  The depiction of the MAGA crowd is somewhat less than complimentary. 

Twilly Spree, last seen rampaging the everglades with Skink, dishing out justice to those who defile the environment, is back.  This time he meets the beautiful Viva Morales and soon finds himself embroiled in a plot involving corrupt congressman, a white supremacist militia group who would struggle to find three brain cells in their entire membership, a fake charity exploiting children, and a pair of rich zealots funding the whole shebang.

Dale Figgo, leader of the Strokers for liberty, is one of the funniest creations in Hiaasen's entire catalogue. When I saw the name of his white supremacist group, I thought strokers must mean something different in American slang.  But it doesn't.  Figgo was kicked out of the Proud Boys for a feces related incident on January 6 and formed his group as a competitor. 

Hysterically, the Proud Boys genuinely have rules preventing their members from pleasuring their own members. In Figgo's group, his soldiers can play with their privates all they want, he even provides them with sex toys he steals from his day job. 

This book is not what you would call subtle.

What I would call it is brilliantly funny. I'm guessing that the congressman is a very easy to recognise interpretation of a genuine congressman if you know more about US politics than I do, so i am probably missing out on a few jokes, but it doesn't matter. Clure Boyette is one of the most memorable characters in the book.  His utter incompetence is rivalled only by Dale Figgo. 

Hiaasen's targets in this book are very easy to hit, but he scores bullseyes with every shot.  There is a lot of low hanging fruit here that Hiaasen has plucked and served as a gourmet meal. I don't normally find a book entertaining on the basis that it will make a lot of people angry, but this will annoy all the people that deserve to be annoyed. 

And that pleases me immensely.  It's the gravy on top of a veritable feast of top class comedy writing. Basically, if you take this book personally and feel offended by it, you probably are the intended object of the joke. 

This is easily the best thing he's written for a few years. Go out and buy it. 

Number 43- Coyotes Vol 2- Lewis & Yarsky

 

The second volume of this unusual feminist take on the werewolf legend.

I actually found this much more entertaining than volume 1.  Packed full of violence rendered in gorgeous artwork, combined with great thoughtful storytelling.

This manages to hammer home its messages without ever feeling preachy about it. 

So, thought provoking, beautiful to look at and entertaining, what else do you need from a graphic novel.

Number 42- Starship Titanic- Terry Jones

Book 42 as ever has to be Hitchhikers related. 

This is one of the few that I'd not already read.  Based on one line from HHTTG (about the Starship Titanic undergoing a Sudden Massive Existence Failure (SMEF) a mere ten minutes out of space dock), Douglas Adams took the idea and used it for a computer game.  The novel of the game was handed over to Monty Python's very own Terry Jones.

So story by Adams, words by Jones, should be a recipe for success...

Sadly, the most remarkable thing about this book is that it was written entirely in the nude. This was the condition Jones made when he was offered the writing task.

It starts extremely well.  We are introduced to a cast of aliens involved in the building of the ship, including the genius architect behind the design. Also the corrupt politicians who've been cutting corners and planning an insurance job.

The problem with the book starts once the ship has suffered the SMEF. At this point the action switched to Earth and a cast of tedious humans.  The Starship suddenly appears in the atmosphere and crashes into a building they've just bought and they're taken on board as passengers while the genius architect is left on Earth. This is a third of the way through the book and a sudden complete change of cast.  A couple of the original characters pop up but not for a long while.

The biggest problem with this book is that it isn't really all that funny. It also doesn't fit in with the HHTTG universe since the Babel Fish isn't a thing and translation from alien to human is done through the ship's computers. The humour is very broad and nowhere near as clever as Adams's writing. 

It's very readable.  I can't say I was ever bored reading it, but it never rose to the ranks of classic like the original series.  It also falls into the same trap as many novelisations of games, where the characters keep getting moved onto side quests before returning to the main plot.

I think this one is for completists only.

Number 41- Memoriae- SP Somtow

 

At long last, the fourth book in Somtow's remarkable trilogy about the real life slave boy who became Empress of Rome under  Emperor Nero (quite literally).

Book 3 finished with Nero and Sporus returning to Rome after their eventful trip to Greece. Nero has lost support of the Senate and his time as Emperor is now limited.

Is there anything Sporus can do to help himself in the Post-Nero Rome?  From the entire structure of these books, with Sporus telling his story to his make up artist before being sent into the Coliseum to be viciously murdered, we know the answer is probably a resounding No, but this book manages to remain compulsive as it moves to the inevitable conclusion.

The research that's gone into this series feels meticulous, but rather than feeling like info-dump which can be a danger, it feels like atmospheric world-building. The city of Rome is so well portrayed you can almost smell it.  

The complex politics of the Senate are described in an easily accessible and understandable way.  

It's sad to see the nd of this series, and that's always a sign of a good book. It's impossible to feel anything but sympathy for Sporus.  He really has had a tragic existence, even if he was revered as a Goddess at one point.

A fitting end to a great series. 

Number 40- BRZRKR vol 2- Keanu Reeves et al

 

More of Keanu Reeves imagining himself as an eternal assassin with more blood lust than the entire Mongol hordes.

The artwork is pretty damned good and suits the megaviolence of the story.

Everything I said about volume one still applies here.  From reading China Mieville's novelisation of this series, I have a good idea where it's headed and I'm looking forward to continuing.

Number 39- A Song for Quiet- Cassandra Khaw

 

This is the follow up to Hammers On Bone which I read last year and greatly enjoyed.

This one is even better. 

Deacon James is a blues musician travelling across America in search of gigs. He also has something inside him that could be very dangerous indeed.  He produces music that can change the world around him and not for the better, music that produces visions of empty and melting faces, gaping mouths and grasping tendrils rising from the pits of some hell dimension.

He's being followed by an apparent madman called Jim Persons- who we the reader will recognise as the narrator of Hammers and Bone.

Will Jim be able to help Deacon and maybe even save the world as we know it?

The way Khaw writes about his music is almost physical.  I could almost hear the discordant melodies Deacon was playing. His visions were equally evocative and nightmarish.

I raced through this book in one day, partly because it's short, but mainly because Khaw's prose grabs you by the throat and rags you at breakneck pace through to the end of the story. This is almost a flawless novella.  I am in the process of gathering all her back catalogue into my collection, and enjoying every minute of it.  I might give Nothing but Blackened Teeth a reread to see if I enjoy it more now I'm more used to Khaw's writing style.

Number 38- Miss Benson's Beetle- Rachel Joyce

 

Talk about a change of pace.  From the dark gritty historical horror of Otessa Moshfegh, to the whimsical ramblings of Rachel Joyce

When my book group suggested this book I was convinced I was going to hate it. The reviews on the back cover using all the phrases that make my stomach churn in entirely the wrong way.  this sounded like the literary equivalent of a diabetic coma.

However, once I started reading it, I found it an object lesson in not judging a book by its cover.

Miss Benson is a teacher in 1950s England.  When she catches her class passing around a distinctly uncomplimentary picture of her, she experiences a moment of clarity about how much she hates her job and her life, and she walks out on it all to try to fulfil a childhood ambition- to find an almost legendary golden beetle in the remotest part of the remote land of New Caledonia on the opposite end of the world. 

She advertises for a companion to come with her on the journey, but due to circumstances, takes the distinctly unpromising Enid Pretty with her.  Enid is everything Marjorie Benson isn't. At first they clash, but as is the way in these things, they find unexpected depths of friendship on their voyage of mutual self discovery.

Normally this is the type of thing to make my eyes roll far enough to see the back of my own skull and dislocate the optic nerve into the bargain. But Joyce's writing is sublime.  She has a lovely turn of phrase and I can only describe this book as delightful.  I've never used that word to describe a book before, but it's easily the best I can think of for this one.

There is a dark(ish) heart to the story.  Miss Benson has sad reasons for being so obsessed with beetles, while Miss Pretty has a dark secret of her own. Also, Miss Benson is being followed by an ex-soldier with PTSD and a dangerous obsession of his own after Marjorie refused his application for the role of her companion. The ending of the book is a genuine emotional rollercoaster.

This is an easy contender for the best book of the year so far.  I never expected that when I picked it up and read the reviews on the back cover. I am now going to have to add her back catalogue to my ever expanding TBR pile.

Number 37- McGlue - Otessa Moshfegh

It's 1851 and McGlue wakes up from an alcoholic bender in the brig of a cargo ship.  He's told he murdered his friend and colleague (and possibly much more) Johnson.  He has no recollection of having done so because of his drinking problem.

With enforced sobriety, McGlue finds himself reliving the worst parts of his history. He needs a drink more than anything to stop the stream of memory.

This is another historical almost horror novel from the author of Lapvona which so impressed me last year. I'm not sure this one is quite as successful.  It didn't have the same visceral impact on me that Lapvona did.

It's still an excellent read and I fully understand how it was shortlisted for the Booker in 2016. Moshfegh is an unusual writer and she very successfully manages to portray all McGlue's internal conflicts through the fractured nature of the writing.

She makes no attempt to sanitise 19th century attitudes for a 21st century audience, so some readers will take offence to some content in this book.  However, it would be a much lesser book if she  had tried to do so, and the character would have felt much less realised.

It's not her masterpiece- so far I think that's Lapvona- but an excellent character study of a deeply flawed person in a convincing historical context. A strong stomach is required at times, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Number 36- Cat Lover- Dan Spencer

No prizes to regular readers of this blog as to why I bought this book. Anything with a cute kitty on the cover :) 

Also it sounded more than a little intriguing. From the blurb, a woman living alone with her cat suddenly brings a man into the house.  The cat is not happy and plans to get rid of the intruder.

From the book itself, the spirit of a dead ex boyfriend sort of possesses the cat but doesn't have complete control.  He does indeed want to get rid of the new man in his woman's life, but, being a cat, can't actually do much about it. 

This is an interesting book. The concept is novel and the prose is just off kilter enough to still be readable and weird at the same time.

There are some odd narrative choices.  The switch to first person in the cat chapters in the third act was jarring and made very little sense till nearly the end.

I'm not 100% sure I liked it.  I kind of did, but it didn't quite deliver on the promise of the plot description.  It took itself entirely seriously whilst I was expecting some type of black comedy. 

I did like the prose. Clarity was not always the strong point though.  Once again in this book I found myself rereading passages, but mainly to try to work out what had just happened this time around. The ending was a bit of an anticlimax. 

Would I read a Dan Spencer novel again if he writes another?  Probably out of morbid curiosity, but it wouldn't be top of the TBR pile.

Number 35- Thornhedge- T Kingfisher

 

I read a Kingfisher novel last year and thought it was fairly good.  Enough to encourage me to read another.  This one has raised the bar considerably. Thanks to this one, she is now in my must read and collect everything she's written list of authors.

This is a dark take on a traditional fairytale. A princess sleeps in a tower and has done for hundreds of years.  When a handsome prince arrives on a quest to find the castle, now hidden behind a huge hedge of thorns as large as swords, will the curse be lifted? Not if Toadling, the changeling spirit guardian of the tower has anything to do with it.

This is of course Sleeping Beauty with a twist.  The princess should not under any circumstance be woken, she's the bad guy this time around and the sleeping curse is there to contain her.

Kingfisher truly excels in this book.  I raced through it in a day.  It's gorgeously well written and there were passages I read multiple times because of the lushness of her language.

Toadling is a fabulous creation, an utterly original character with a bizarre set of abilities which may or may not be able to help her with her assigned task.

I don't think I could have loved this book more. Kingfisher is attending an event at my local Waterstones in the very near future.  I foresee a spending spree after payday for that one.

Number 34 - Sweet tooth the Return- Jeff Lemire

 

Given the ending of the original Sweet Tooth series, I was surprised to discover that there was a sequel.

I really enjoyed this despite the fact that the premise directly contradicts the ending of the original series.

Lemire manages to not just replicate the beats from the original series, and gives us something new and original with the characters.  For that I'll let him off with the fact that the entire situation is impossible inside his own universe that he created.

The artwork is an improvement on the first books and Lemire's writing is every bit as convoluted and unpredictable as I've come to expect.  It might be a cash in on the Sweet Tooth name, but it's a good one.  

Number 33- Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

 

Quite simply I think this is one of the most important and prescient novels of the 20th Century. This isn't the copy that I read, but it is one of the four editions I own of this book. It's somewhat fragile these days (it is more than 70 years old after all)

It's the not too distant future and ignorance is king. Entertainment is delivered through wall sized interactive tv screens. Independent thought is highly discouraged and reading is banned.

Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books when they are found in people's houses. He enjoys it. But what if he was to pick up a book himself and take it home?

From the first iconic line- "It was a pleasure to Burn"- onwards, this is a poetic and urgent plea against the dangers of ignorance, against the deliberate dumbing down of society.  I don't think this book has ever been more topical.

It's not a perfect novel. The timeframe seems a little off.  No one remembers when firemen were the people that stopped houses from burning, yet one of the characters at least used to teach literature in his dim and distant past. The dialogue is not always convincing. Most people in the book will monologue in very similar voices.

However, despite these flaws this is an essential novel and one I've read probably a dozen times now and it gets more scary every time I read it.  It's the only constant fixture in the 10 to 15 books or so that form my top 3 of all time.

 I find Bradbury's prose to be magical.  he's on top form in this book, and the writing manages that rare trick of combining beauty with a great story. The monologues that the characters come out with might all sound like the same voice, but they're telling us truths about the importance of literature.  He quite rightly points out that even with books, the evils of society exist, but points out that books and reading provide a level of protection that we can't afford to lose. 

There is power in his writing, and the mechanical house still haunts my nightmares as one of the most terrifying monsters ever committed to paper. The closing chapters manage to ratchet the tension to almost unbearable levels.

This is a book I believe everyone should read. So go out and read it. Or stay in and read it. But read it.

Spoiler

True story regarding this book

There was one day I was reading it, sitting in my 18th floor flat overlooking Manchester city centre.  I was close to the end, the section where the bombers fly over and release their payloads. Bradbury describes the collapse of the city. The next line of the book is "The sound of its death came after".  The second I read that line, there was an almighty bang, an explosion, and my windows rattled.  The first thought that went through my head was 'fuck me, this edition's got sound effects'.  I looked up and there was a plume of smoke rising over the city centre.  It was the day the IRA blew up Manchester and destroyed the Arndale centre.

Number 32- the Blunderer- Patricia Highsmith

 

Another reread from my teenage years. I wanted to be really clever and use the following plot description which you may recognise from my review for Wilt (indeed I would only have needed to change one letter. 

"Walt dreams of killing his overbearing wife.  When she goes away on an unscheduled trip, he fakes her death.  Unfortunately. she fails to return from said trip, and the police get involved."

Unfortunately, I picked the wrong Highsmith book.  The one where the lead character stages his wife's murder on the day she disappears for real is A Suspension of Mercy. So much for my mini themed read of the same storyline with vastly different treatment.

 

The Blunderer is a similar story of a man suspected of his wife's murder, but has a very different central plotline and no resemblance to the plot of Wilt in the slightest.

The book opens with a surprisingly brutal murder by Highsmith's standards, where a man follows the Greyhound bus his wife is riding, drags her off into the nearby bushes and beats her to death. 

Walt is going through marriage difficulties. They no longer love each other.  She has grown paranoid and suicidal. He has ceased to care about her. when he reads in the papers about the murder from the opening chapter, he follows the bus his wife was on with dreams of committing a copycat crime.  He's seen by several people at the rest stop, and drives home again. When his wife's battered body is found at the bottom of the cliff nearby, his lies to the police about his actions that night throw serious doubt on his innocence. When he crosses paths with the murderer from the book's opening, things get progressively worse.

One of the reviews on my copy of this book says "Highsmith writes about men like a spider writing about flies" and I can't think of a better description.

If you like characters who plan carefully and don't make mistakes, this is not the book for you.  The title should be a clue. Walt makes mistake after mistake.  He digs himself deeper and deeper into a world of pain. It's almost impossible to keep sympathy with him, but his story is compelling. The brutal cop chasing after both Walt and the murderer from the first chapter is more of a villain than the murderer. 

This is a chilling psychological thriller and one of my favourite of her books.  

Despite my mistaking the storyline, I'm really happy to have reread this one even if I didn't mean to. Her books are always densely written, full of psychological depth, and totally captivating.  Her word choice is always spot on.  The fraying of their relationship in the first few chapters is superbly and subtly portrayed. 

A masterclass in putting the reader directly in the heads of a cast of characters.  It's a train crash in slow motion almost.  As bad as things get, we're compelled to read on to see if it can possibly improve, or is the light at the end of the tunnel just a freight train about to mow everyone into bloody pulp on the tracks?

Number 31- Wilt- Tom Sharpe

 

A reread from my teenage years and I just have to say I was far too young when I first read this book.  

I remember thinking it was hysterically funny when I first read it, and that opinion has not changed on revisiting it 35 plus years later. 

Wilt dreams of killing his overbearing wife.  When she goes away on an unscheduled trip, he fakes her death.  Unfortunately. she fails to return from said trip, and the police get involved.

This is absolutely the funniest thing I've read in several years.  there were scenes I still remember from all those years ago. From the initial burial of the rubber sex doll to its eventual recovery, this is farce at its best.

Sharpe is/was a great writer and even a character as weak and worn down by life as Wilt is initially is eminently relatable. HIs journey of self discovery through the multiple indignities he's exposed to in the course of the story is a joy to read.

The side story of where his wife actually is- stuck on a barge in the Norfolk broads with an insane American lesbian and husband- is equally funny and leads to some of the funniest scenes in the book. 

Eva Wilt is a force of nature. Her character defies description. We can completely sympathise with Henry's dreams of ridding himself of her, but we still can understand how and why they're married.

It's always strange reading a book written and set in the early 80s.  When a restaurant is criticised by one of the charaters as being too expensive because they charge £0.95 for a prawn cocktail starter, it's now a culture shock.  When Wilt's salary of £3500 a year is enough for he and Eva to own their own rather large home in the suburbs and keep Eva in all her expensive hobbies, it really does drive home how much some things have changed.

Luckily, it's only the money talk that truly dates this book. Some people might say that some of the humour might not be considered de rigeur these days, but for the most part this has aged well and even the bits that some people would say haven't are still hysterical IMHO. 

This is a pitch perfect blend of satire (the internal workings of the college where Wilt teaches are brilliantly done) and bawdy farce. There is some complete filth in here (not explicit, but still filth) that I was far too young to be reading in the 80s, That makes me love it all the more that parents let me read this stuff.  As much as Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams helped formulate my sense of humour, Tom Sharpe definitely deserves a look in as another influence.

Number 30- the Buck Stops Here- Sean Seebach

 

This is the remaining book in the themed series started by Alan Baxter with the Roo.

This was the second one written, but due to the fact that they're all standalone novels and it doesn't matter what sequence they're read in, it's the final one I've bought and read.

It's probably not a surprise to learn that this one is about killer deer. Not just that, but killer Were-deers.  

When people start dying horribly in the town of Rockbridge, Sheriff Abigail Laine finds her peaceful life disturbed.  Normally she just has a couple of traffic tickets to write up in a typical week. Maybe dealing with the town drunk, nothing more.  Now she has an escalating number of bodies to investigate. And she knows the killer isn't fully human or animal.

This is a great fun read.  I loved the mention of the book that started this whole series when one of the characters is seen reading the Roo and Alan Baxter gets a big shout out.

The characters are fun and relatable. there are just the right number of Shreddies (tm) in the story and the deaths are suitable gory.

It manages the balance of keeping the plot silly enough to be funny but serious enough to actually build tension in the confrontations in the second half of the book.

This is the best of this mini series after the Roo.  It's a quick read with some not overdone social commentary built in. It's no contender for book of the year but if you want a simple fun book with zero pretentions, it's recommended. It does what it says on the tin and lives up to that cover.