I like Miles Jupp’s work as a comedian very much, but I didn’t enjoy History nearly as much as I expected to. This is partly because it isn’t what I expected, but I think the book does have weaknesses, too.
Clive Hapgood is a history teacher in a minor public school. The book is really a character study of Clive, a decent, well-meaning but unhappy and rather hapless man on whom life’s difficulties keep piling. The plot is largely a series of his frustrations, embarrassments and humiliations as things in his professional and family life keep going wrong.
In some ways it’s decently done; Jupp writes well and has a penetrating eye for Clive’s lack of self-awareness, the petty annoyances of life, the sort of vacuous blether many of us have to put up with from managers with little experience of the job people actually do and the way in which a seemingly sound marriage can go wrong. The thing is, I don’t find awkwardness and embarrassment funny, so the book was actually rather a depressing read for me. By half way I was hoping for some sort of a change and possible beginning of redemption, but it’s more of the same almost throughout. For me, this was a flawed structure and I struggled and eventually skimmed my way through the second half.
I’m sorry to say this of an author whom I like very much as a comedian, but I can’t recommend History. It has its merits and others may enjoy it but I’m afraid I didn’t.
(My thanks to Headline for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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