I hope this is not my legacy

This book is high amongst my favourites of all time.

Apparently there was loads of hype on the internet at the time, but I must have missed all that, and it was recommended to me by a random forum post a year or so ago. I approached the book with no preconceptions at all, and was absolutely blown away. For a start, it is incredibly easy to read- once you start you will not be able to put it down. This isn’t because there is an amazing plot with a bunch of twists, because as the title suggests the book is purely character based. However I found myself wanting to get deeper and deeper into the narrators mind throughout. Of course it also doesn’t hurt that the book is written from an extremely exaggerated egotist male perspective which I personally found incredibly easy to relate to, and that it truly delivers comedy blows on a page by page basis.

The author has this to say about the book:
“Mom, thanks for always encouraging me to write and be creative. I’m sorry the end result of that encouragement is something you will not want to read”

So what is it about? I would say the main subject of the book is emphasising the difference in male and female outlook on relationships. That might sound like the domain of a women’s best-seller rather than an overpoweringly ‘laddy’ book, but the way in which the subject is approached- centred around various sexual encounters of the unnamed narrator- means that at no point will you have to worry about it straying into gossip column territory. I don’t want to spoil this book for anyone who may read it, but the most interesting thing about it is how accurate some of the observations about male thought process regarding women are. These are all totally over the top and more to the point, isolated from any other thoughts that the narrator may have, meaning that the narrator appears as a bit of a twat. But I think that most men will find themselves agreeing with him regularly, and most women will be questioning just how close to reality it is, and consequently how honest their respective ‘men’ may be.

I persuaded R to read the book recently. I wanted to know how she would interpret it, and if it matched her expectations of male inner psyche. I genuinely didn’t know how she would take it, and once you have read the book, you will understand that this experiment could have gone horribly wrong. After reading, she did have “some questions” for me which I managed to answer carefully. I would strongly recommend to all men reading this post that you should beg, borrow or steal a copy of this book and give it a shot.

It is only a few quid and I can guarantee that at a minimum it will make you laugh, as well as make you think. However, lend it to your significant other at your own risk.