Laughing matters
These two funny novels make light of life’s dark side
History
(Headline, £16.99) In this debut novel from comedian Miles Jupp, the main character – you could hardly call him the hero – is Clive Hapgood, a history teacher at Frampton, a minor public school in Wiltshire.
Clive loathes his pompous headmaster and back-biting colleagues but not as much as he loathes himself for having left his job at a comprehensive to teach the children of the rich.
Feeling undervalued and guilty, he starts to go a bit bonkers.
Like David Nobbs in The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, Jupp offers a sensitive and insightful depiction of a midlife crisis, while simultaneously extracting every last ounce of comedy and farce from Clive’s situation.
He writes extremely well about how Clive’s self-pity is souring his marriage to his nice wife Helen and is particularly strong on marital rows (“Helen said nothing in a manner that was almost deafening”).
The middle section of the book, an account of a disastrous family holiday in France, goes on too long, ending up as a repetitive sequence of petty humiliations for Clive. But otherwise, the novel is hard to fault.
Jupp writes in the wonderfully wry, deadpan comic style that fans will recognise from his TV and radio appearances: the jokes are sometimes so subtle that you can already be halfway down the next page before you burst out laughing.
And the novel is touching in the same understated way – you’ll be surprised by how moved you are.
Jake Kerridge
Will social media be the end of us? It certainly seems that way in The Echo Chamber, John Boyne’s new novel about the poisonous world of clicks, likes and retweets.
The privileged Cleverley family live together in a large house in west London. Patriarch George is a BBC TV interviewer – and self-appointed national treasure – whose affair threatens to derail his marriage and his career. His wife Beverley is an under-celebrated (in her opinion) author who secretly employs a ghost writer to turn her clichéd ideas into romantic bestsellers. Then there are their three children – toxic Twitter warrior Elizabeth, budding blackmailer Achilles and serial liar Nelson. Add a devilishly handsome dancer, a pregnant therapist and an After Eight-addicted tortoise, and the stage is set for this laugh-out-loud skewering of modern life. The Cleverleys all use social media with varying degrees of success but they don’t understand how quickly one ill-considered post can destroy a reputation that’s been years in the making. So when George posts a Twitter comment that he considers supportive of the transgender community, he is full of self-righteous outrage when it blows up in his face. The Cleverleys are a truly insufferable bunch, as smug and self-satisfied as they come – it’s impossible to feel sorry as they get their comeuppance. To be honest, their endless awfulness becomes a bit wearing as the novel goes on. But it’s a minor quibble. Fun, fierce and furious, The Echo Chamber is a riotous read that is not to be missed.