As a big fan of diary style literature I was very pleased to stumble across this Kindle bargain, and seeing an appreciative tweet aimed at Jon Rance from someone I follow on Twitter bypassed it to the top of my reading pile.
This Thirtysomething Life is about a bloke called Harry who is coping badly with hitting thirty and settling down properly. It is written over a period of nine months as Harry sturggles to cope with impending fatherhood.
As with most diary style novels, like Bridget Jones and Adrian Mole, Harry is an unfortunate individual who seems to bounce from one disaster to another. However I didn't find Harry as likeable as those characters, primarily down to his profession. Harry is a teacher and an incredibly lazy and incompentent one at that, therefore I found him really annoying at times, and at others I just found him to be a bit of a cock! However I think the fact that in real life as a teacher I have no tolerance for idiots like him (having worked with many over the last few years), therefore this started to cloud my views about the book.
Despite this I still found this a really enjoyable read, yes Harry's a twat, yes it's probably not the best written books ever, but it's funny and makes you want to read in one sitting, and I was disappointed that it was only written over a period of nine months.
Good work for a debut novel!
3/5
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