Narrated in the anonymous second person, present tense, this week in the life of dishwasher employed at the hotel who, like Walter Mitty, repeatedly escapes from his dead-end squalor into a world of fantasy is hilarious.
The 2nd person narration creates a feeling of empathy (please, not identity, 'your' life is too sad and sordid for that) with the narrator as he fails again and again to improve his sex-life (“It is a long time since you have made love to a woman, possibly as long as two years or if it may even be as long as eight if the woman being in the same room as yourself is the deciding factor.”; Monday. At work. A shambles within a shambles.). Somehow, every attempt to hook up with a hot woman (or even a hunky man) ends in an explicit (but squalid rather than erotic) and humiliating disaster.
He remembers his past: bullied at school, living in a shopping mall after his dad murdered his mother, friendless as university, an unconsummated relationship with a performance artist in America, a brief marriage ... No wonder that he tells tall tales to his colleagues and seeks solace in building wish-fulfilment pipe-dreams of his glorious future.
He then embellishes these excursions into the world of make-believe. They become more and more convoluted, gloriously so, as he doubles down. For example, when he imagines being kidnapped and held to ransom but left to rot when not only relatives but even a crowdfunding pages doesn’t raise the money. Or this part of a sentence: “You are considering purchasing a Russian bride although you know you will not because you will purchase one that does not like you and she will sit in the corner glowering at you, smoking strong Russian cigarettes that sting your eyes, or she will read long psychological novels by Dostoevsky and Gogol and she will not even glower at you which will be even more painful especially as you have rung the agent, Sergei, who used to be in the KGB, and Sergei has told you that she doesn't come with a refund option or a money back guarantee.” (Friday morning. Glory. Love is in the Air.)
And there are some outrageous puns:
- “Another day, another douleur” (Monday: The Flamingo Hotel. Monday morning. A win win situation.)
- “Peter and John, the co-joined twins, stand shoulder to shoulder by the fridges.” (Monday. At work. A shambles within a shambles.)
- “He can dissect a deadly blowfish as easily as other people cut the mustard.” (Sunday night. The End.)
I've been struggling to find comparisons. I think this is the first comic novel I have encountered that uses the second person. Is the humour Rabelaisian? The disastrous biography reminded me of Voltaire's Candide. The rambling discursiveness reminded me of Tristram Shandy. There was a hint of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.
Selected quotes:
- “You are an ant upon the globe, lacking significance as much as you lack a purpose.” (Monday: The Flamingo Hotel. Monday morning. A win win situation.)
- “You can only think that your affair started at a low point in your life although this low point is hard to pinpoint as there have rarely been any high points.” (Monday. At work. A shambles within a shambles.)
- “Why do you have to make these changes today? That is the beauty of days. There are always other ones.” (Monday. To the end of the day. The Birdland Bar.)
- “She licks you, starting at the big toe and working her way slowly up your body, even including your bumhole which only your pet dog Sparky has ever licked (an event which both of you regretted)” (Tuesday lunchtime. This Sporting Life.)
- “It made you contemplate how much sperm you had wasted in your life. It was a lot. More than a bucket full but not as much as a swimming pool. Somewhere between the two.” (Tuesday lunchtime. This Sporting Life.)
- “You add making love to Peggy-Sue to your list of things to do before you die. This list you keep on a roll of shiny toilet paper you stole from Paddington train station toilets after you'd been chased there by a gang of angry skinheads. It has over two and a half thousand items on it. Sometimes you take it out and weep.” (Wednesday evening. The Man in a Pink Suit. With a bum on his face.)
- “It was your foreskin that saved your life. Not many people can say that.” (Thursday afternoon. The forsaken foreskin. Part 2.)
- “And the tears form in your eyes because on your best days you have never been as good as second best.” ( Friday, at work. The Greatest Love of All. Polye Thylene.)
- “The moon is out in full, like a dinner plate a small child has thrown up on.” (Friday night. Your Love is King. Part 2)
- “It was your counsellor at the nuthouse who gave you the copy of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. In your drug-addled state you had confused it with Tyrannosaurus Rex and believed it to be yet another sequel to Jurassic Park.” (Sunday morning. the beginning of the end. some thoughts about death.)
Comic genius.
July 2026
Published by Bearded Badger in 2020
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