Reading all this chick lit is, of course, fabulous, but sometimes I fancy a bit of testosterone and it was with that in mind I picked up Jim Keeble’s My Fat Brother. Jes is the fat brother of Scott - a popular poet with a gorgeous girlfriend. The brothers are friendly, but not particularly close.
But then Scott’s girlfriend dumps him and while his professional life seems to be going from strength to strength, his personal life is going from bad to worse and this, coupled with a family tragedy, leads Scott to question everything, try to repair familial relationships and, um, assault a penguin.
My Fat Brother isn’t a bad book - I enjoyed it to a certain extent - but it’s similar to quite a lot of books I’ve read recently in that it takes forever to get going and the reader seems to be expected to care about the characters from page 1. I’ve actually given up on a couple of books because even by page 100 I didn’t care. It’s just lazy writing.
For example, Scott’s devastated when his girlfriend finishes with him, but I’d seen so little of their relationship and had so little insight into his feelings about her (apart from the fact that he once vaguely thought about what it might be like to marry her and he’d never thought that about a girlfriend before), that I just didn't care. About halfway through the book something happened that made me cry and I realised I really felt for Scott, but halfway through is too late.
Plus a lot of the action in the book seems to take place for comic effect rather than there being any genuine motivation. And it’s funny. A bit. Just not funny enough. It’s a shame, because there’s some good stuff in here about the odd and competitive relationship brothers often share, but it’s hidden under a lot of, in my opinion, irrelevant, unoriginal, and insufficiently explained subplots. A shame.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Like this? Try The Family Way by Tony Parsons