The Monday Review :: ‘Oh what a lovely book!’

Good evening.

Next week, all going well, I will be interviewed for a Christian radio station. That should be fun. This week, a couple more reviews on Amazon, starting with one by S P Williams, which I will now excerpt for my own glorification:

‘...It's soon evident that this isn't a quick cobbling-together of blog posts. On the printed page, Stan's writing comes into its own, with an immediacy and incisiveness that instantly engages. Stan's depiction of the minutiae of human interaction is amazingly perceptive… It's also riotously funny: really laugh-out-loud, blowing-snot-out-of-the-nose funny. I can't recommend this highly enough; it deserves to be massive, if only so that we can hear a lot more from Stan. An astonishing debut from a huge (in all senses of the word) talent.’

That’s probably my favourite so far. I particularly like the bit about snot. I hope it really happened.

The second is from Ian in Melbourne, and includes the following:

‘Beautifully written… a rollicking rollercoaster ride that swings wildly and unpredictably between comedy and pathos…. But I did wonder how the blog format - episodic, rambling and continuing - would translate into the necessarily more disciplined and discrete book format. And, I wondered, how can it end on a satisfactory note with at least some semblance of the loose ends being tied up? The answer is wonderfully well. You know that feeling you get when you savour every page of a book, when you simultaneously can't wait to get to the next bit but feel anxious because the pages left to read are steadily reducing and you don't want it to be over - well, that's 'Bete de Jour'…. And when you get to the ending a wonderful surprise awaits, unexpected even for readers of the blog. Suffice it to say that Stan does indeed find love, though not necessarily in the way we were expecting. And, seeing himself for the first time through the eyes of someone who loves him deeply and unconditionally, he finds a measure of self-esteem and, yes, happiness. Oh what a lovely book!’

Awww. That’s nice.

Then there’s a review on Hendo’s blog. Hendo is the guy who suggested I might be Irvine Welsh merely pretending to be Stan Cattermole for… actually, I’m not sure for why. I don’t think Hendo’s sure either, but he still has his suspicions. ‘He does write almost suspiciously well,’ he writes, suspiciously. ‘Could this be a fascinating experiment by someone much better known? I can’t rid myself of this thought. I’m like that though.’ Ah, Hendo. You big nutter, you. Sadly, Hendo also has a few reservations about the book. Happily, I’m going to ignore them. He ends by saying: ‘Anyway do buy this book, a man who writes like this – whoever he is - deserves lunch.’

I do deserve lunch. He is right. I’m going to have a Mars bar ice cream. Then go for a bike ride.

Until tomorrow.