Book Review: How Not To Grow Up

Author: Richard Herring

First Published: May 2010

Tardy Review date: 8 March 2011

Lots of laughs and some truly touching moments

I'll be honest with you up front, I'm a Richard Herring fan.  I lost track of him for a few years when he stopped being on the telly, but over the last couple of years I've seen him a few times live and I'm an avid listener to his podcasts.  Just a couple of weeks ago I saw him doing his latest show 'Christ on a bike' in Swindon.  The theatre wasn't exactly packed, but the people who were there had a good time in a show that's both clever and funny.

And those two words - clever and funny - sum up Herring's work pretty well.  He often refers to the fact that me makes a living telling cock jokes, and there's certainly a crude and childish side to his routines, but it's a rare Herring performance that doesn't also make you think and question your way of thinking.  I wouldn't say How Not To Grow Up is challenging in the same way, but it's often thoughtful and Herring's innate honesty and self-examination are a common theme throughout.

It's definitely a funny book.  I found myself laughing out loud a few times whilst reading, and that's something I never do with books.  I usually think it's a bit weird when people say a book make them laugh out loud, and the most they usually provoke in me is a reserved smile, but this book definitely provoked the odd guffaw.

For much of the book RH is approaching 40 and railing against the idea of having to become a grown up.  He doesn't want to do it and he fights against it with every fibre of his being, seeking debauchery and rebellion as the big date looms.  Convincing himself that he's happy as he is, he nonetheless manages to appear pretty fed up.  As a reader it's easy to see the symptoms of a mid life crisis and when he's in 'author' mode, describing the events, Herring is able to pick apart his previous insecurities and disillusions.  He still manages, though, to present them as he felt them at the time: real and valid.

It's Herring's comfort in being able to lay his life open, warts and all, that make the whole thing hang together so well and allows the reader to laugh at him - he, as the writer with 20:20 hindsight, is laughing at himself while he tells the tale, so we're just joining in.

Herring's examination into his experiences asks whether this rebellion against growing up is a modern symptom or just part of being human.  Whilst this isn't necessarily a ground breaking investigation, his discussions around it will certainly chime with anyone of a similar age and give the book a more relevant feel, rather than just becoming a tale of a stand-up comic's fits of debauchery.

As the book progresses, he starts to examine the balance in keeping the good aspects of childhood and throwing away the bad.  He describes this as the good aspects of childishness (the sense of wonderment and openness) and the bad aspects (the pettiness and being self-centred). I remember Neil Gaiman once describing it as the difference between being childlike and childish, which I think sums it up well.

The final two chapters of the book are absolutely superb and I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed the ending of a book so much.  The penultimate chapter creates a genuinely touching and moving sense of the wonder there is to be found just by looking out at the stars and feeling happy.  It's the sort of thing that could easily have become overly sentimental and corny, but Herring walks the line perfectly and creates an emotional impact that's superb.  When I saw there was another chapter, telling a funny story about a kid, I thought he'd blown the ending but, if anything, he manages to top the preceding chapter.  He captures the essence of what it used to be like to be a child and urges us to recapture a little of that for ourselves.  If you think that sounds like a good idea, then you could start by reading this book.

Book Review: Transition

Author: Iain Banks
First Published: September 2009
Tardy Review date: 5 February 2011


A patchwork novel that intrigues but never quite satisfies


I used to be a big Iain Banks fan and read all of his early books, at least the non-sci-fi ones.  I do like sci-fi but, for some reason, I just never got around to reading the books he wrote with an 'M' in his name.  More recently, I haven't tended to read his novels, either.  Actually, I thought I'd just check out which of his books I've read and one (Song Of Stone) I've got, but don't think I ever got past the first few pages.  Another (The Business), I can't actually remember if I've read at all - looking at summaries, it sounds familiar but I really couldn't tell you what happened in it.

So, why the change?   I think it's mainly Banks's approach, rather than the subjects or plots.  In his early novels his writing seemed to be almost dangerous in style - he wasn't afraid to cover any topic and his style was more edgy and immediate.  His later novels seem safe by comparison and, whilst they're still well written, they don't tend to have the same injection of adrenalin or passion.

Still, I saw Transition's red cover in the bookshop when I was looking for something to read and I couldn't resist giving him another go.  The cover description promised a story of parallel worlds and a mysterious organisation with extraordinary powers, and it made me think of his early novels Walking on Glass and The Bridge.  Both used a mixture of realities and viewpoints to excellent effect, making them both confusing and fascinating in a way that I loved.

Transition is, indeed, written in a similar style.  It discards the idea of both a linear plot and a single viewpoint, jumping around timelines, characters and realities several times in each chapter.  This patchwork style turns the book into something of a puzzle, leaving the reader to try and work out how those fractured elements fit together, which isn't without interest.  It certainly built up an intrigue around the central character and his place in the aforementioned organisation, known as The Concern.

The central concept is one of infinite parallel realities or, to be more specific, parallel Earths.  The people of one of these Earths have discovered a way to travel, or 'transition' between the different realities.  Our main character, generally referred to as the transitionary (although he adopts numerous names throughout the book), is employed to interfere in these other realities as instructed by The Concern.  The theory is that he's trying to improve each reality by helping the do-gooders and stopping the bad guys, but he seems to spend a lot of his time assassinating people.  Of course, the very fact that there is so much unrevealed both to him and to us, leads to inevitable suspicions about what The Concern is really up to.

As I say, I haven't read of the Iain 'M' Banks sci-fi books, but I imagine this is the closest of his mainstream novels to his sci-fi work.  I certainly like the concept of the book and found the style kept me moving forward.  I really wanted to know why The Concern existed, what they were trying to achieve and how our main character fitted into the whole thing.  Unfortunately, I don't think the book ever fully answered those things.  I don't expect to have everything spelled out to me, and I do think it's good to have some space around the plot and characters to form your own opinions, but this book seemed to raise so many questions that it never really answered, I found myself feeling a little frustrated at the end.

Moreover, the style of the book tended to work against it.  As I mentioned, I think the structure did create a sense of intrigue and mystery within the story and, ultimately, kept me in suspense.  But I think the whole approach of splitting every chapter up so much was overdone.  There simply wasn't enough time or human interest devoted to each character at any one point, so it became a struggle building up a relationship with them.  I was about 50 pages into the book before I even felt I was starting to 'get into' it, which I think is asking a lot from a reader.  Perhaps it shows the confidence of an author who's written over 20 books and knows he has a loyal audience, but I don't think it's something a lesser known writer would be able to get away with.  One of the other significant characters, probably the second most important in terms of pages devoted to him, has a story that really only has a limited relation to the main plot and doesn't really add much in its own right, so I wondered in the end why I'd spent so much time reading about him.

The inside back page of the book promises an iPhone app that allows the reader to download extra content about the book and characters.  Maybe this provides some much needed background to the characters and their situation that would satisfy my need to know more but, unfortunately, I have an android phone so I'll never know.

If you're interested in reading an Iain Banks novel, I'd recommend any of them up to, and including, Complicity.  I thought they were all fantastic when I read them (and re-read them in some cases).  After that I feel he's lost his touch a bit.  Maybe it's inevitable for an older, more successful author to write books that seem safer than his younger, less famous self.  Perhaps it's an age thing.  I hope not, though - I'd really love to see Banks return to his old form with a challenging, exciting novel at some point, and I really hope it happens.  This isn't that novel, though.