Eric Idle on Monty Python, life’s brighter side in ‘sortabiography’
“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography” (Crown Archetype), by Eric Idle
Eric Idle has been funny for a very long time.
He gained fame almost 50 years ago playing pompous TV hosts and leering idiots as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. While the original BBC TV show ran for only four seasons, it spawned a bunch of live shows and several movies, including “Life of Brian,” which ended with Idle on a crucifix singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
He reprised the tune at the 2012 London Olympics and featured it in his Broadway hit “Spamalot.”
There are a few laughs in this book, billed as a “sortabiography,” but it mostly reads like a casual memoir of someone who still can’t quite believe his good fortune.
Idle is one of those funny people who had a miserable childhood. His father survived World War II in the Royal Air Force only to die in a traffic accident as he was coming home for Christmas in 1945. The boy was eventually packed off by his overwhelmed mother to an orphanage, or “Ophny” as residents called it.
He made it into Cambridge University and – more significantly – into its performing Footlights club, which was a springboard to British stage and TV shows. In 1969, the BBC rounded up some other bright young performers for a sketch show so undefined it didn’t even have a name. Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam toyed with names like “Toad Elevating Moment” and “Whither Canada?” before settling on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
“We didn’t know what we were doing and insisted on doing it,” Idle writes. The show – a mix of absurdity, whimsy and high-brow humor– had evolved from British comedy before it, but it was a revelation when it crossed to the United States.
A lot of the book is about the famous and fabulous people he hung out with, among them George Harrison and David Bowie. His chapter about his relationship with the late comedian Robin Williams is especially poignant.
“We Were Mothers” (Little A) by Katie Sise
What starts as an exhausting birthday party for Cora’s 2-year-old twins ends with a missing woman, a possible affair and an ever-growing list of secrets. Katie Sise’s “We Were Mothers” expertly snaps readers to attention with its grandiose opening.
Cora’s Pinterest-worthy celebration for her children serves as the comical setting where we meet Cora’s friends. It’s also where we learn Cora has a crush on her best friend’s husband, still wears mesh postpartum underwear and tends to hover as a parent. Meanwhile, the doting mom’s entire social circle harbors secrets all tied to motherhood, a theme that beats loudly on every page.
Three of the women find themselves tethered together by the death of Cora’s sister, Maggie, and the mystery shrouding the night she died.
Timing, inner discourse and believable fiascos blend together producing fantastic scenes, like when Cora pretends her toddler is only joking after the child slaps her mother’s face in front of the neighbors.