A very 'punny' guide to murdering your spouse! (How to Kill Your Husband - Kathy Lette)

Member Name: jo1976

Product:	How to Kill Your Husband - Kathy Lette
Date:	16/07/09 (105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Witty use of language, humourous

Disadvantages: Took a while to empathise with the characters

Kathy Lette is an author whose work I first discovered as a teenager and thoroughly enjoyed, most notably Foetal Attraction and Mad Cows which are both well worth a read. I hadn't read any of her novels for a number of years, after finding some of her more recent novels to be something of a disappointment. 'How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints)' was being given away with a magazine a couple of months ago and, lets face it, with a title like that what married woman could resist? (It was worth getting just for the look on my husband's face when he saw the title!)

The book opens with a discussion about the main character's inability to orgasm, which sets the scene for a novel that features quite a lot of references to sex and sexual innuendo. The main character's husband is a vet, but the pussy referred to in the opening pages doesn't seem to be one of his patients! Perhaps this isn't one to share with your mother-in-law or one to read if you're easily shocked by explicit language!

The story is told in the first person, from the point of view of Cassie O'Carroll, a busy teacher, wife and mother of two who is struggling to juggle everything in her life with little help from her husband. Cassie is one of three friends, along with Jazz (Jasmine) and Hannah, who met at university and have continued to stay in touch despite having totally different lifestyles. The story opens with Jazz facing murder charges after her husband's disappearance and then proceeds to work through the events of the months leading up to it.

The best part of Kathy Lette's work is her writing skills and her quick-witted, hilarious manipulation of the English language to produce really funny puns. (I should really make some joke here about her Australian heritage but I can't think of anything remotely witty, although I'm sure Lette herself would produce a great play on words. That probably explains why I write reviews online while she writes bestselling novels!) This book doesn't disappoint in that respect. Lette's ability to write fantastic lines for her characters is second to none. Here are just a few of my favourite lines from the book:

'You could initiate sex now and again - and try different things. Couples do swap positions occasionally, you know.'
'Yes. Let's swap positions. You stand by the sink washing-up and I'll lie on the couch farting and watching the footie.'

'I was going to procrastinate but, as usual, I didn't get quite round to it.'

'Not all men are bastards - some of them are dead.'

There are many similar puns and quips throughout the novel, most of them used as parts of the conversation between the characters. Here, is what becomes Lette's weakness, in my opinion. There is so much emphasis on making the lines and dialogue clever and witty that it doesn't come across as natural conversation at all which makes the characters that much harder to relate to as people, as they are essentially just vehicles for Lette's witty punchlines. In spite of the amazing writing, I found the first half of the novel quite a struggle to get through as I really didn't empathise with any of the main characters and I couldn't really get involved enough in the story because of that. The three friends didn't appear to have anything in common whatsoever and didn't seem to particularly like each other. That, in itself, makes it harder for me to like them as characters.

Fortunately, I did perservere with the novel and have to admit that the second half is much better and I did start to genuinely care about the characters and become engrossed in the storyline, rather than just being impressed by the author's clever use of language. I just think that the book would have been better had more effort been taken to make the characters seem human, rather than concentrating on giving them clever lines to say. As the story progressed, I did find the character's personalities and individual stories were expanded a little and I did find the ending to be particularly satisfying and it was just as I'd hoped it would end.

My copy was a magazine freebie but copies are widely available on Amazon for just a few quid. This isn't the best of Lette's work, by any means, but it is enjoyable escapism and there are a few genuine 'laugh out loud' moments here that make it a worthwhile read. Unfortunately, the title is a little misleading as it doesn't contain detailed instructions on how to kill your husband after all, much less any handy household hints!

Summary: An A-Z guide to murdering your spouse?