Opinion

The Best a Man Can Get

Written by: John O'Farrell
Published by Black Swan

Michael Adams lives a double life - He has a wife and children in a house in North London with whom he spends such time as he feels he has to, but when he leaves them to go to 'work' he goes to a flat south of the river which he shares with three other men, where he does indeed work as a jingloe composer, but where he also spends days and nights doing nothing, escaping from his family life and leaving his wife to deal with the children. Discovery is inevitable.....

Call me old-fashioned, but books which feature lead characters who have no redeeming features whatsoever leave me cold. Michael is a selfish, thoughtless, arrogant git who manages to pass months of his double life without a moment's guilt about deceiving his family, nor about leaving his wife to deal with bringing up two small children while pregnant with a third. There isn't a single positive trait to the man's character, and reading chapter after chapter of his endless self-justification and indeed smugness makes for a thoroughly depressing experience.

What makes it even worse is that every expectation the book creates is that this is a comedy. "Howlingly funny" says the front cover. "Giggling several times a page....is guaranteed" says the back. "Bollocks" says this reviewer.

I read O'Farrell's previous book Things Can Only Get Better, and even though that too promised a laugh-riot and failed to deliver, it was at least humorous, and actually, a great study of the eighteen years of Tory government in the UK from 1979-1997. This has no such social value to redeem it.

On the offchance you're thinking of reading the book, stop reading now, because I'm about to give away the ending.

Michael's deceit eventually having been uncovered, and having lost wife, children and home because of mortgage arrears built up over the months and years of his double life, he is eventually reconciled with his wife shortly after the birth of the third child. O'Farrell makes a last-minute effort to show a single redeeming quality in him, in showing that he is capable of forgiving his wife after a supposed infidelity, but it's too little, far too late, and anyway, the cumulative effect of the character's lies, arrogance and crass smugness is such that one is left feeling that this forgiveness is the very least that he can do

I can't recommend your avoidance of this trite, unpleasant, irritating book strongly enough. Tosh, tosh, tosh, tosh, tosh.