book reviews , different studio guests each week. Join us every Thursday between 12 and 1pm on Radio Scilly 107.9fm or log on to radioscilly.com.

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Thursday 12 December 2013

John O’Farrell - The Best a Man Can Get



 
book reviewed live on show by Brian Lowen on 12th Dec 2013
Not my usual type of book but it made a pleasant change.

Michael Adams shares a flat in London with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit of work. Michael is a musician, composing jingles for adverts on the TV.  Then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children.

For Michael is living a double life – he escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to work through the night, or up country. While she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until his deception is inevitably exposed, and then his wife throws him out.

The book is quite amusing, not hilariously funny as it says on the cover, but I enjoyed it. There are some good bits I found very funny, like when he is trying to make things up with his wife while she is in labour in hospital having their third child and there is also good repartee between the four flatmates.

Some of the descriptions as to how one’s life dramatically changes when you have a baby could be enough to make any young couples think again about starting a family.

A good piece of light reading that does not require a lot of concentration to follow.



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