May Contain Nuts

John O'Farrell

John O'Farrell is impossible to dislike and all his books have the relaxed sense of comic timing of a writer who has spent over a decade scripting jokes for others. His style is the faux anguish of the comfortably off middle-class middle-aged leftie. So New Labour. His signature dish joke appeared at the end of Things Can Only Get Better: "My local Labour party asked me to leaflet my neighbourhood at the last election. I didn't want to let them down so I got the au pair to do it." But May Contain Nuts is pretty thin stuff.

The joke is supposed to be on competitive parents. Alice, our narrator, is terrified her North London children are going to fail the entrance exams for their neighbourhood grammar school and be consigned to the academic wilderness of the local comp. Fortunately she and husband David have a cunning plan. Daughter will be sick on the day of the exam and Alice, dressed as a pre-teen, will take her place, and naturally will stroll through any exam designed for eleven year olds. Admittedly it's an interesting comic idea and I've a feeling I've half-watched several Hollywood films which have sniffed round this sort of territory.

Trouble is, out here in the real world, beyond John O'Farrell's corner of London, we're not quite so freakily panic-stricken about schooling. And unfortunately for this book, John O'Farrell's style works best if we're laughing with his characters, not sneering at them.