A fellow blogger and metal detecting enthusiast John Winter (you can find his excellent blog down there on the right) asked me the other day if I read mostly female authors. I can understand him thinking this as I've recently reviewed books by Caroline Smailes, Ann Weisberger, Nicola May,Talli Roland, Meg Rosoff and Rachel Joyce on this blog. But in the last twelve months my favourite books have also included Pigeon English, The White Tiger,We The Drowned, Florence And Giles and Homer And Langley all of which were written by men. And by pure coincidence, both the novels I read this week have male authors.
I've grumbled so often about the lack of funny books that I started to wonder if I had lost my sense of humour. All the "I nearly wet myself ", "tears were streaming down my face" and "I almost died laughing" quotes on the fronts and backs of novels might muster a glimmer of a smile at best. There's one author on Twitter who, almost every day, quotes that a famous comic found his book hilarious - it's a pleasant enough read but he got me to buy it under false pretences.
Well, finally, here's one that does exactly what it says on the tin (that would get the narrator's back up).
Driving Jarvis Ham by Jim Bob opens with "Would you drink a pint of your own piss?", a brilliant line but one that might deter the more sensitive reader. But, sensitive reader - any reader, I urge you to proceed beyond this and the increasingly gross challenges that Jarvis and our narrator are discussing in one of their "in car" games and enjoy an extremely funny tale of a childhood friendship that came about one day at school and continued for the next thirty years. Jarvis is a Princess Diana obsessive, wannabe actor, wannabe pop star, wannabe anything famous. He's got none of the attributes that might give him even a smidgeon of a chance to realise those dreams - his classmates called him "balloon head", he can't sing and he can't act but somehow, our narrator, his only friend, sticks with him and indulges him with lifts to his no hope auditions and am-dram flops.
Something more sinister lurks beneath Jarvis' loser existence as the novel develops through a clever combination of diaries and other mementos some discovered by his friend, some written by him. I love the friendly narrative conversational style. There are also some brilliant illustrations that alone would justify a "laugh out loud" quote on the back (although there are more than enough laughs even without them). Our narrator earns a living writing funny one-liners for Christmas crackers, fortune cookies and church posters (ruining my long held belief that the vicar at our local Methodist church must be Southport's funniest man) and he relates the story with wonderful humour and style. Do read it - if you buy the electronic edition you even get four free songs by Jim Bob to download and enjoy.
Having finally found one very funny book it would be too much to ask to read another in the same week wouldn't it but Michael Frayn's Skios is just that - a very funny book. Nikki is busily organising a big event for a charitable foundation on a beautiful Greek island. Fifty something Dr Norman Wilfred is flying there to make the keynote speech whilst handsome young chancer Oliver Fox is also on his way to the island to take advantage of a sexy woman in a villa he's managed to cadge for a week from friends of his wealthy not quite ex-girlfriend. All the classic characters are in place for a farce.
And what a farce develops! When Oliver discovers that his conquest has missed her plane and spots Nikki at the airport waiting for Dr Wilfred it's an opportunity he can't resist and what follows is a delightful concoction of mixed up luggage, mistaken identity and wrong bedrooms against a backdrop of sunshine, shady politicians and some other dark goings on on the hillside. It's a credit to Michael Frayn that he has managed to put together what is effectively a theatrical farce into a novel and he has pulled it off quite perfectly right down to the minor characters that no farce would be complete without - in this case brothers Spiros and Stavros from Skios Taxis and their catchphrase "thirty two euros".
So that's two very different and very funny books in a week. Whilst a lot of Driving Jarvis Ham 's humour is in the writing and Skios' laughs come from the absurd situation both are hugely enjoyable reads.
I've got The Red House by Mark Haddon (another male author please note) to read now before starting on Middlesex for Scott Pack's book club experiment later in the week (see the link to the meandmybigmouth blog over on the right)
A combination of bad weather and not much going on has given me the chance to read a couple more books this weeks. And what a contrasting pair they were!
The first, The Personal History Of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber is an American novel set in the South Dakota Badlands around the time of the first world war. Rachel DuPree is the wife of a rancher who is struggling against impossible conditions to be successful. The novel opens brilliantly with the couple's desperate attempts to recover water from the bottom of their dried up well. This sets the tone of the challenges they face throughout the book. But Rachel, with a houseful of children in tow and another on the way has far more to cope with than the drought that is scorching the earth and killing their crops and livestock. She and husband Isaac are black and with that comes the additional hardship of prejudice from both the sparse population of whites and also from the local native Americans.
It is a compelling read and beautifully written. The relationship between Rachel and Isaac is in no way a classic love story but has more in common with the relationships we see in eighteenth and nineteenth century literature where marriage is more often a matter of convenience rather than the result of true affection and this is the strength of the novel. Instead of simply watching two people fighting the elements together we see the inner turmoil of Rachel as she balances her feelings for her husband with her love for her children.
The book is a fascinating study both of a rare subject (black American landowners) and of racial prejudice and it is the latter that makes it stand out as far more than a fictional misery memoir and more of a memorable novel. It's five stars from me.
The second read this week is Star Fish by Nicola May. As a granddad in my late fifties I am not exactly the target audience for this but Nicola is one of the authors I follow on Twitter and, when she tweeted special offers on her books last week I supported her and downloaded them. As you can guess from the cover, it's a romance like Build A Man by Talli Roland another on my Twitter list that I reviewed on here a month or two back.
Amy is a woman in her early thirties looking for love. Keen on astrology; she joins a dating agency that specialises in finding partners who are astrologically compatible and then goes through the Zodiac in her quest to find Mr Right or a "sole" mate to her Piscean ways. It's a well written book aimed at fun loving (i.e booze and sex loving) females and I think that if you fall into that category you will find it a good laugh. For an old bloke who in his teens thought a peck on the cheek on the first date might be pushing it a bit it's a lesson in how times have changed as Amy has plenty of sex with a string of Mr Wrongs before she finds her Mr Right. She's crude, she's rude, she's quite outrageous but at the same time vulnerable and I can see the book being a big success for the audience it's aiming for. As someone who liked most of the characters that Amy considered rubbish dates I'm glad that I did my courting in the sixties and early seventies as I wouldn't have stood a chance in her world. I hope that it's a big hit for Nicola. She even made an old curmudgeon laugh a few times.
I'll leave you today with the song by Clare Teal that moved Marion to tears on Sunday evening.
