This Is Your Life

John O'Farrell

John O'Farrell continues to mine comedy territory somewhere between the Lad Lit of Nick Hornby and TV's Men Behaving Badly. This latest novel contains that Lad Lit staple: the thirtysomething guy whose career is going nowhere, ditto his love life, and with just a dog and a collection of rather useless (though loyal and true) mates for company. In This Is Your Life the useless thirtysomething is narrator Jimmy Conway. Jimmy's big break occurs when he is mistaken for someone slightly more important by a TV crew and desperate to maintain the fiction he invents a career for himself in underground comedy. When the lie snowballs and Jimmy Conway quickly becomes the comedy act it's fashionable to have seen (or claim you have) suddenly the narrator is a medium-sized celebrity.

Of course, it's a reworking of the Emperor's New Clothes. And all too believable in its modern media setting. Awkwardly, for Jimmy, he has never done a comedy routine in his life. Awkwardly for John O'Farrell (who can tell a joke and who pops up from time to time on your TV screen being more than decently funny) there isn't enough original comedy in this book. Sure, there are plenty of jokes, just too many groaners and not enough grinners. The stale aren't-dogs-funny-the-way-they're-so-loyal-but-so-stupid routines which kick in every now and again are the book's particular lowlights.

Certainly not up there with the O'Farrell debut Things Can Only Get Better.