It seems that I’m not having much luck in my recent reading choices. I now realise it was supposed to be laugh-out-loud funny, but I’m afraid Matt Cook’s “Life on Other Planets” didn’t have that effect on me. The occasional smile of amusement perhaps. And I also confess that when I bought it, I didn’t realise it was supposed to be humorous – which isn’t my bag anyway. In my defence the blurb doesn’t make it totally clear what the genre is. It could have been so different.
For me the bar in terms of humorous fiction was set years ago by J.P.Donleavy’s “The Onion Eaters”. That made me cry with laughter.
At the end of the day “Life on Other Planets” left me with a “so what?” kind of feeling. Let’s hope you enjoy it more than I did.
Ian Gouge - Writer 