Matt McAvoy Book Review

This is pure, unapologetic comedy-of-errors stuff, a kind of worst-case -scenario, fish-out-of-water tale that the literary world loves, colourful cartoon cover and all – though don’t expect the standard love interest in this one, thankfully, I might add.  Instead, as MIT genius Charlie returns to his family home after being made redundant, the question is: will he or won't he learn to love and appreciate all that he has – namely, his imposing and utterly deranged family – rather than yearning for all that he had and thinks he wants again, particularly the dream job he lost (isn't it always the "dream" job?) and the city lifestyle which came with it?  On the way to finding the answer to this soul-searching dilemma, he faces one increasingly embarrassing situation after another, almost invariably caused by his parents, siblings and grandfather (who are all pretty annoying, to be honest; if I were Charlie, I couldn't get far enough away from them, either).

The book is actually pretty good, with the standard sort of young city professional humour which generally always engages the reader from the outset; whether you actively choose the genre or not, you still always find yourself enjoying the read.  We tend to like these books because they're predictable -  not in the respect that we know what's going to happen next, for in this case you genuinely don’t know what's next from Charlie's mad family, but rather in that you know it's going to make you laugh, even though you know it's undoubtedly going to be bad for Charlie, way over the top in plausibility, and that if something has the potential to go wrong, it will.  Indeed, Charlie doesn’t so much go sideways in this book, as pretty much as close to the bottom as is possible while still keeping a roof over his head, his health, and the reader on the right side of amused.  His luck is predictably conspiratorial from one situation to the next, but, dare I say it, you tend to know it'll all work out in the end, one way or another – whether that's Charlie accepting and embracing his fate or clawing his way back to success. 

Either way, you'll have a great deal of fun reading this book, and that's surely what it's all about for Bob Marsocci, a wonderful writer with a great sense of humour.  I'd love to see what Bob – and indeed Charlie – get up to next.  And, although I may have given a completely different impression, I hope the latter's (mis)adventures become even more preposterous.  Good stuff from Bob.