I hadn’t heard of this writer before and to be honest it’s probably not a book I would pick up in the shop but it was recommended by two different people and so I gave it a shot and, boy, am I glad I did.
Doug Parker is a widower at 29 and pretty keen on spending the rest of his life getting plonked and throwing stuff at the rabbits on his lawn. He’s got every right to feel sorry for himself – he had only just met and married the love of his life when she died in a plane crash.
A year down the track, though, everyone is pretty keen for Doug to move on, yet he prefers misery. Usually, I want to give blokes like this a good slap and tell them to pull their socks up but Doug has a certain boyish charm and he also has a very entertaining family.
His bossy twin sister, Claire, has no time for his wallowing, his baby sister, Debbie, is ruining his bad buzz by getting married, his mother is acid-tongued and often addled by booze and drugs, and his father is just plain addled.
Then there’s Russ, the angry teenage son of Doug’s dead wife, who desperately needs a father, a friend, a role model – none of which Doug is currently much chop at.
Although it is ostensibly a book about a mourning widower, it’s also a book about a family pulling together despite the chaos. I cried just as much as I laughed, which was a lot.
