Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

by Mil Millington
(Light comic fiction)

JAMES says:

The debut novel from the writer of the ‘Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About’ column in the Guardian and creator of www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com , this is a man who has picked his theme and is running with it. A, one most presume, largely autobiographical book, this follows Pel Dalton (hmmmmm), an extremely hapless man who drifts from one crisis to another, while arguing with his girlfriend. As a novel, this works very well as a collection of columns. It is laugh out loud funny, and Millington often has a Wodehouse-like mastery of the wit of understatement. Do not, however, come to this book hoping for a gripping tale, or even any tale at all really. There is a half hearted attempt at excitement featuring Triads and deadly nerve gas, but it really is pegged on to fill the gaps between Millington noticing that women like cleaning and men like sitting on the sofa watching TV. Good for light relief between more weightier books (it has driven me into the arms of Saul Bellow’s Herzog) but little more, why not try visiting the website instead. Plus, it’s all a bit one-sided. I await ‘My Boyfriend has Based his Whole Career on the Fact that we Argue all the Time, but you don’t see me Writing a Book about it’, but then that would be a book, and she would’ve made the entire project redundant before even the title was finished. Very funny though.

6.5/10