It's About: The very domesticated Tom Violet living out his wild side. Tom Violet is modern man, office worker, married man, father and son to a Pulitzer Prize winning author. He kind of gets bored with being an office worker, his eye wanders as a married man, his daughter is a precocious 7 year old that sort of has the all-seeing eye on his life and his father is a bit of a drunk that sort of became a famous author by accident. And all Tom wants, really, is to be a writer just like his father. It's a book that comes together in a series of mishaps including a very funny opening chapter about erectile dysfunction from the male's perspective.
What I Liked: The modern male, 30 something voice is present, strong and believable. It is not often that I buy the voice of the protagonist hook, line and sinker.
The Part That Didn't Work: His HR jokes. I am HR. The letters to HR were dumb and quotes like this make me want to fire the guy: "Instead, it's someone from HR, Judy maybe, or one of the other five interchangeable middle-aged women who work in HR." Like, seriously, I am so not interchangeable.
My Recommendation: Definitely worth a read. The voice is fresh, new and believable.
While I can definitely understand the HR stuff being unfunny to you, it sounds like something I could really enjoy. I've been in contact with some brutal HR departments before.
ReplyDeleteGreat review. This sounds good.
It is funny. I just object to being called interchangeable. Think Miss Piggy and her reaction to being interchangeable. The reaction was similar.
ReplyDeleteHR is only successful when we leave the human in the human resources. I strive for that each and every day.
I've heard of this book before and thought it sounded like a pretty good read.
ReplyDeleteI'm a new visitor (and now follower) to your blog - I love it!
Megan @ Storybook Love Affair
Megan - welcome! I hope you enjoy your visits to BookBelle. I love your blog too!
ReplyDeleteOh I'm so glad you liked this book! And you're absolutely right, Tom's voice is just so vivid. He really shone as a character.
ReplyDeleteI can see your annoyance with being called interchangeable, lol. However, I really don't like the HR lady at my job. She's such a COMPANY person, and really doesn't care about looking out for the employees' side of things at all. And she never returns phone calls. Grrrrr... lol. I bet you're a MUCH better HR lady :-)