Well, that was a book.
I really wanted to like this. I like Craig Ferguson, even if for some damn reason my addled brain kept getting confused and thinking “this doesn’t read like it was written by Stephen Fry” when they’re really not terribly alike. I guess European men who vaguely remind me of my erudite and shameless father all just get lumped into one, so pay attention if I review anything by John Cleese to make sure it’s him, I guess. I bought this solely to participate in CBR bingo, and I got my square, so by at least one metric the book succeeded.
I… I was not a fan of this one.
This read like A Confederacy of Dunces with Forrest Gump thrown in for bad measure. And all the ugly ugly characters with the worst bits of humanity sprinkled in was not what I needed right now. Bonus points for token female and black characters embodying the worst cliches of their types – passive woman exists to make the man’s life meaningful and nothing else, black gangbanger is secretly gay behind the macho posturing – this has been done before, and better, and less offensively (and not in the – it’s all so shocking! way it seems to have been intended. It’s boring in its cliched subversion.)
But, I will say for Ferguson that I’m genuinely impressed with how well it all hangs together as a book. For as scattered as it is, Ferguson keeps track of his callbacks very well, and the threads of the book are intricate even if they don’t rise to the label of plot.
300 pages of no thanks.