Him, Her, Him Again, The End of Him by Patricia Marx

Patricia Marx, "one of the finest comic writers of her time", is a former SNL writer, her work has been in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and she's the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon. To top it off Steve Martin "cried that he didn't write it" and the cartoon writer - the fantastic Roz Chast - says it's "laugh-aloud funny, witty, incisive, a wonderful book".

Fans of Patricia Marx, if you are reading, move on to another site.

I can't recommend this book. I was ready for the funniest comic romp since...

But I didn't find one single thing funny in this book. I mean, not one. I didn't smile, I didn't laugh. I didn't find anything interesting or clever. I didn't like anyone in this book. I didn't like her boyfriend Eugene Obello. I didn't like her in Cambridge, or when she moved to New York. I didn't like when she wrote for an SNL knock off 'Taped and Proud", not interested in her kid's show Tattle TV.

He does come back and there is an end to him, but he was absolutely uninteresting. Maybe everyone was a parody of a character? Mystifying to think it's amusing.

It's also written where the central character talks directly to you, non-stop, for the whole book. It's like being trapped next to someone telling their life story and never. shutting. up.

I did read it to the very end, hoping. Even now I look back and wonder, is there a funny line in it I missed? Can't find one.

It was a non-event.

2007 / Hardcover / 240 pages