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Life... On A High: A laugh-out-Loud Comedy Sequel - Nick Spalding
by CarolineR-D
A while ago I read and reviewed Nick Spalding's first book, Life....with no breaks, which was basically a book about writing a book. Nick sat at his keyboard with no idea where the book was going to go and just typed, aiming to write for 24 hours non-stop. The result was an interesting and amusing combination of observations on life and ... anecdotes in a book he described as part autobiography and part "half-arsed confessional." I really enjoyed Life...with no breaks so couldn't wait to read the sequel, Life....on a high. In the second book Nick is writing on a long haul flight. So it's a slightly different setting but really more of the same - embarrassing confessions, rants, words of wisdom and asides on a range of topics, presented in the same conversational style as the first book, as if author and reader are two good friends being reunited after a break. You may find the concept of talking the flight away with a virtual companion intensely irritating or cute and engaging. I found it a bit of both. Nick invites the reader to come and join him in business class as he travels to Australia. "There's an empty booth opposite that looks perfect for you.....If you're going to keep me company as I fly across the world, you'll need somewhere nice and comfortable to sit, won't you?.....Feel free to steal the headphones when we land." It's rather charming, but I admit I found some of the banter rather patronising at times.
When I started the book I feared it may not live up to my expectations. I loved the first book but that was probably because it was something of a novelty. I had my doubts whether Nick would be able to do essentially the same thing again, but at 40,000 feet, and pull it off. However an opening anecdote about a fishing trip soon had me chuckling. It's a cringingly embarrassing tale of Nick's efforts to ingratiate himself with his fishing fanatic father-in-law and without giving too much away it involves a pair of bright yellow waders ten sizes too big, a huge slippery trout and a freezing cold Cumbrian river. Once I'd wiped the tears from my eyes and regained my composure, I was ready to forgive Nick for trying to reproduce the same book second time round. You can't help but warm to him when he shares his most vulnerable moments in a self-deprecating style. He can be annoyingly laddish at times though, with his quips about attractive stewardesses and too many references to his sexual habits.
I enjoy observational comedy but I find that if someone is only making observations about things I've observed for myself long before, it can be rather dull. There needs to be a balance between making you nod your head and say, "my thoughts exactly" and making you think, "wow! I never looked at it that way." Overall, I think Nick Spalding gets the balance about right in this book, although there were times when he seemed to overdo his rants over the failings of Tony Blair and express opinions I'd heard many times before. Although I found myself agreeing with much of what he said about the state of Britain, referring to such things as student fees and the benefits system, I found it less interesting because I was so familiar with the arguments and subject matter. I have realised that I prefer Nick when he talks about off-the-wall subjects, things that I'm unlikely to read about elsewhere. If I want to read about what's wrong with the police service or about the nanny state mentality, I can just pick up a Daily Mail and do so. However, where else but in a Nick Spalding book would I read about how it feels to be molested by a weirdo in a chipmunk suit at Disney World, or about a bad experience with LSD which convinced him he was a banana?
What I like about the book is that it's a light, relaxing read, thought-provoking in a laidback kind of way without over-taxing your brain. There's no heavy philosophy in here, but it's one of those books where you might turn to your partner and read out a passage now and again because it has struck a chord with you. Nick has a habit of veering off at tangents as he writes, which means that he rarely spends too long on a single subject. However, in this book more so than the first, I thought he tended to linger slightly too long on particular themes. For example, the section where he talks about his obsession with Batman did not hold my interest because I haven't seen any of the films. However, it's possible to skim over the bits that you don't want to read and pick it up again when he starts on a new subject, without losing the flow. Nick introduces each new section with a quick summary of where he is on his journey and how many words he has written. For example: "11.45 GMT. 1984 words. Over Belgium. It looks even more boring from 40,000 feet." Although this isn't intended to be a flight log, I did find it interesting to see what countries he flew over and stopped off at en route to Australia, never having travelled there myself.
One of the most interesting and funny parts of the book for me was Nick's account of his experiences with internet dating. He reasons, "you can find a car, a new vacuum cleaner and a signed photo of Chris Waddle on the internet if you look hard enough, so why not love?" A series of dates from hell are recounted, my personal favourite being a soup-slurping French woman with a penchant for cigarettes that smell like someone has set fire to a wet bison. There is also a lovely tale of garden gnome theft and Nick's top 10 tips on how to stay young.
Overall, I would recommend this as an upbeat, fun, cheery read, a great bit of escapism, ideal for reading if you're on a flight of your own. The first book combined humour with more poignant recollections but i felt that the sequel is played more for laughs. It's not really a criticism but the contrasting moods of the first book gave it the edge over this one, in my view. However, Nick Spalding is still on form. I don't know how long he'll be able to continue churning out books in the same genre though. Surely he's going to start running out of things to talk about soon, but perhaps I underestimate him. I enjoyed Life....on a high but I have to admit that the magic is fading just a little for me. One sequel is fine, but let's not have a whole series of 'Life' books.
Life....on a High is currently available at the Amazon Kindle store for a very reasonable £0.99.
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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale
by CarolineR-D
The book recounts the events of a notorious Victorian murder case. In 1860 a 3-year old boy, Saville Kent, was taken from his bed at Road Hill House in Wiltshire. His body was later found in an outdoor privy on the premises of the country house. His throat had been cut and there were knife wounds to his chest. The residents of this ... respectable country house immediately fell under suspicion and, as the murder investigations began, dark family secrets also began to emerge. These secrets demonstrated strikingly the double standards of the era - an outward display of prim elegance, but plenty of moral corruption lurking below the surface. Who was responsible for this shocking deed? Investigations quickly revealed that nobody had entered the house as an intruder. Someone out of this curious mixture of adults, children, stepchildren, servants and employers all living under one roof must have committed the crime. Was it the nursemaid, Elizabeth Gough? What of the boy's adulterous father, Samuel Kent? Or Samuel's teenage children, William and the 'sulky and wild', Constance, both with reasons to be jealous of their younger siblings from their father's second marriage? Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher of Scotland Yard is sent to investigate. As the title of the book shows, Whicher has his own suspicions, but the truth of this unhappy episode is far from clear and seems destined never to be resolved satisfactorily. Even when a dramatic confession is eventually made, it poses as many questions as it answers.
The author attempts to depict this true crime story in the style of a Victorian murder mystery. It reads like a novel, but it recounts factual content drawn from archive police files, and pamphlets, essays and newspaper articles originating from the period, as well as trial transcripts. I have always been fascinated by Victorian history and I am also very interested in true crime, so this seemed an ideal book for me.
I was impressed by the way the author vividly set the scene, transporting me back in time to the Victorian era, using striking description to create a clear picture in my mind. At times I felt as if I was making my way around the dark passageways and winding staircases of the vast house, peering into nooks and crannies, searching for clues along with DI Whicher. I could picture the servants going about their duties and the various tradesmen turning up at the house - chimney sweeps, washerwomen, knife grinders and other regular Victorian visitors. I could almost feel the luxurious carpet underfoot as if I really was walking into the nursery, peeping into the cot with the bedclothes neatly pulled back to find the child missing. Kate Summerscale certainly drew me in and held my attention when describing the hunt for the child and his eventual discovery. Sadly, however, she didn't manage to keep my attention as the book progressed, because the narrative jumped about so much. Instead of just telling the story of a fascinating crime, this book seemed determined also to be a biography about a famous detective and a Victorian history book. It tried to tell me too much.
Kate Summerscale devotes a lot of pages to the life and times of DI Whicher, which is necessary because he is a key 'character' of the book. However, whilst I was quite interested to learn about Whicher's career, I became frustrated to be confronted by such long excerpts, which took me away from the events of the country house murder that I really wanted to be reading about. Whicher became a policeman in 1837 when the Metropolitan Police, the first force in the country, was just eight years old. His early experience in the force is described in detail that seems excessive, with almost a page to describe the uniform alone. We learn that in 1842 a detective division was set up to coordinate murder enquiries. Whicher was one of the eight original officers to abandon their beat, shed their uniform and become plain clothed detectives. So Whicher found himself involved in the Saville Kent investigation just eighteen years after the detective force was established and at a time when detectives still weren't completely trusted by the general public. (The absence of a uniform made the public view the detective as little more than a spy.)
How did the police set about trying to catch murderers in those days, I wondered? It seems that Whicher's methods were based largely on instinct and hunches and the book describes his close observation of the inhabitants of Road Hill House, trying to discover the 'hidden self' behind their public image. I found this interesting, particularly because it would be many years before Freud published his work on the meaning of unconscious gestures and words, so Whicher's methods were ahead of their time in some respects.
In many ways the book reads more like a Victorian social history than a murder mystery. There are some startling insights into the treatment of women, for instance. There are references to Mr Kent's first wife showing 'signs of madness' and it is apparent that many perfectly sane women were consigned to lunatic asylums during this period of history. I enjoyed the passages where the author tells us about the reaction of the people in the village to the murder and it seems that gossip and sensationalism were as common then as they are now, with outrageous rumours finding their way into the press. The working people in the village showed much hostility towards the wealthy Kent family. (Mr Kent was a factory inspector and not well-liked. He also had a habit of prosecuting those who trespassed on his land.) The class divide played its part in the wild speculation that surrounded the murder. Working class people in the village were keen to point the finger at Mr Kent; even suggesting that he had posioned his first wife and some of her children. For his part, Mr Kent was keen to point the blame at some disgruntled worker.
It is easy to see how a murder occurring in a middle class family home would have such shocking repercussions. It wasn't only the depravity of the crime itself that shocked people to the core, but also because it undermined the strongly held view of the Victorian home being a place of sanctity, something that could not be violated. Privacy had always been viewed as a good thing, but privacy became synonymous with secrecy, and led people to start questioning things in a way they had not done before. If children were not even safe in a locked house, where could anyone be safe?
Would I recommend this book?
I was a little disappointed in the book. It began on a dramatic note and I was convinced it was going to be a riveting read. It certainly could have been, because Kate Summerscale has clearly researched the subject well. Although she intends this to be a cross between a crime novel and a factual account, for me this never really did feel like a novel as it did not stick close enough to telling the story of the murder case. Also, instead of focussing specifically on Mr Whicher and his methods, I felt that too much time was devoted to general information about police practices during Victorian times, often referring to other prominent murder cases of the era. Whilst this was interesting, it did feel as if she was straying from the point somewhat. I found myself getting impatient because I wanted to focus on the events at Road Hill House without going off at too many tangents. The author also felt the need to constantly refer us to the developments in the new genre of detective fiction that was popular at this time, often describing the works of Dickens, Poe and Wilkie Collins. Whilst I agree it is interesting to see how the writers of detective fiction drew inspiration from real life cases, such as the Kent case, I felt that this was a completely separate subject and required a completely separate book. Whilst I did feel I had learned quite a bit about the Kent case by the time I had finished reading this book, I also felt that I had ploughed through a whole load of other information that hadn't really interested me. It was quite an exhausting read and there were times when I did wonder if I could be bothered to finish it.
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