Do You like book A Certain Chemistry (2004)?
I must have laughed loud and long a couple of dozen times or more while reading the first 100 pages of this 404-page book; and I must have laughed about three times all told, and then only in a charitable way, during the rest of it. Tom Cartwright's a ghostwriter in Edinburgh, Scotland; he's a deft and willing hack and he lives with a girlfriend called Sara with whom I promptly fell in, and remained in, love. But, however skilled Tom is with the written word, he's an idiot. When the chance comes along to earn oodles of dosh ghosting the autobiography of TV soap star and public heart throb Georgina Nye -- "She's been voted the best arse in the UK by the readers of two major magazines" (quoted from memory) -- he grabs both chance and soon thereafter the admired arse with both hands. Most of this refreshingly badly written novel thereafter is devoted to sexual rompery and Tom's difficulties in deceiving and later attempting to mollify Sara. The best character in the book is Tom's hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-swearing and all-round hard-as-nails agent Amy, who every time she appeared had me grinning (partly through recognition; I'm sure I've met her at BEA or the London Book Fair); unfortunately she didn't appear often enough. I'm not sure quite why I became so irritated by this book. I think the reason might well be that Tom is such a depressingly nauseating, selfish, egocentric protagonist. Normally I like amoral protagonists, because they possess a certain detached wit; not so poor Tom. I imagine if you're 13 you'd love this book.
—John
When I get to a place where I'm not up for the books in my queue, I'll check out my fave authors' sites and see what they're reading.Christopher Moore has been reading some Mil Millington (Pete Peterson, John Johnson...some people's parents). He wrote that he laughed all the way through. I, however, do not find this guy as funny as Chris Moore does OR as Chris Moore is. I do, however, find it weird that as much as I love his writing, I've sort of struck out re: reading books he's liked. Hmmm...I didn't find this book atrocious, just a bit boring. There are writers and agents and celebrities and girlfriends and infidelity involved. I'll admit there are a few places I laughed loudly, but not enough to buy a copy for everyone I know.However, giving Chris Moore another chance by reading another of Millington's books: Love and Other Near-Death Experiences. I'd put it on the back burner and read it another time but it's due back at the library next week, so I'm gonna burn through to see if it redeems Chemistry. I doubt I'll be moving on to his others...
—Jamie L
Not quite up to the level of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. But let's be fair: Millington's first novel set the bar pretty high. Millington's sophomore novel is a solid follow-up. It's really quite funny in spots, though there's a fair amount of The Office-style of painfully awkward funny. If you like that sort of thing, this is definitely worth a read. I do enjoy some level of laugh-at-other-people's-discomfort (who doesn't?) but there were a few spots when I quite literally had to put the book down and walk away when the awkwardness ratcheted up just a touch too high.
—Joe Miller