Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 July 2007 09:13:51
Mike Gayle is in many ways the UK yin to Douglas Coupland's Canadian yang. Both write books containing a stream of cultural references about the lives of thirty somethings which are similtaneously mundane, dysfunctional, and bizarre yet they are completely different. Coupland throws in the disturbing through using the outrageous at times where as with Gayle the disturbing is thrown in using the bland and ordinary.
This weekend I have inadvertently taken "me time" because my planned quality time with Third Party has been blown out of the water by her desire to spend time with her mates. So it is that I have drunk vast amounts of fairtrade decaff whilst munching my way through piles of hobnobs and rich tea and read through Gayle's latest novel "Wish You Were Here".
It's a good sit down and chill completely without having to have a labotomy type book. The main appeal about this book is it is about "normal" people, who I can relate to (not surprising when this work of secular fiction contains: main characters in their mid thirties, a Christian who is not like the "stereotype" but rather a normal bloke who spends most of the book reading a "Rough Guide", eating full Englishes and drinking larger, a single mum who is on holiday with her sister because it is a cheap break, people with middle ranking jobs in the public sector and odd references back to their life at uni in the early 90's). The plot is basic but works well and at the end of it you are left feeling happy, but still cynical enough to know the happy ending is only because it stops when it does. Think that's a very long winded way of saying I recommend this one.