Book Review

Quick Reads Initiative

I have to admit this is the first time I have come across this scheme, although I felt like I knew about it from my children’s schools celebrating World Book Day. The initiative was launched in 2006 by Tony Blair, not sure he deserves a name check but. By 2018 it had run out of funding and was propped up by JoJo Moyes for another three years.

More than 130 titles have been published since the launch and each book is required to have no more than 128 pages. They are designed to encourage adults who don’t read often, or find it difficult to ‘discover the joy of books’. The initiative has been a prominent force in hospitals, prisons, adult literacy teaching, book tokens, dyslexia centres, care homes, stroke recovery units, homeless organisations, and even Army/RAF bases.

This book purchased by my son was direct from the publisher, Vintage and yes it was I repeat £1 delivered. They have others and they can all be read in a couple of hours so I suggest searching for The Reading Agency Quick Reads to discover more. I know I will. Here is the 2023 list.

Back to the book in hand

Without giving away spoilers, it was a decent read. Quite typical of Doyle’s style, it had little description and no exposition, instead relying most on character and dialogue. All told via an unreliable, confused, and disorientated first-person narrator.

Set in Ireland, the story features a dead man climbing in and out of his coffin while jesting with his reunited friend about their female conquests. The reunion only coming about because the friend has died and Pat decides to attend the funeral service even though they haven’t spoken in a very long time, owing to an argument about a horse.

We are repeatedly led to believe things aren’t quite what they seem via suspicion, Pat cannot fathom how his wife knows his friend is dead as he didn’t hear her phone ring and seems dissatisfied when she says she found out via a text message. These awkward, repetitive conversations become thematic within the story. Other themes are guilt, death, missed opportunities and taken opportunities.

A couple of quotes stood out, particularly because they resonated with my horror-comedy studies and I will conclude with them below but before I finish I wanted to add that I found a lot of amusement in the word, ‘grand’. It is repeated as an answer by both Pat and his wife at varying occasions and made me smile each time, regardless of the awkward nature in the context of this book. My dad has currently taken this word on and with his dementia and T.E.A diagnosis, he repeats it regularly when asked how things are, even saying it with gusto a few seconds after a recent seizure because his short term memory is pretty non-existent. I love having reasons to smile. It makes me feel, ‘grand’.

Stand out quotes

p.36 ‘It was sad. But it was funny too, in a way. She was an old lady but I was a bald man with a belly the size of my head. If I was shocked, so was she.’

p.49 ‘But this was the thought which made my legs wobble. He was dead but he was alive. He was alive and dead. My best friend was a zombie. Or something. I wasn’t sure what a zombie was. Or how you became a zombie. Was there an exam or a test? All I knew was Joe was dead and Joe was alive.’