Lick the light switch

Almost a year ago I wrote this:

I

I had tried to read Wilt already twice, it’s quite a short book, but somehow I had failed to get past the first pages both times. I failed to even open it when I took it to my holidays in the beach, but I’d to come back home earlier than my friends, so I had a boring three hour bus ride ahead, which was a great opportunity to finally read it.

Wilt (Tom Sharpe, 1976) is a novel about an underachieving assistant lecturer (Henry Wilt), which grows increasingly demoralized by both his simpleminded wife (which he dreams to kill) and his frustrating experiences teaching literature to a bunch of uninterested construction apprentices in a South England community college.

Everything gets messed up when Mrs. Wilt gets lured by Sally Pringsheim’s liberal ideas, and talks Henry into attending a party hosted by the Pringsheims, a bizarre hip couple. Henry ends up with an inflatable sex doll overinflated around his genitals, and Mrs. Wilt gets extremely infuriated. From this moment the story goes wild and I won’t spoil it

I was waiting for my flight to Mexico in Barajas and suddenly realized that I still needed a book to try to make a bit more pleasant the 13-hour flight I was about to take. I was looking for a “light” one, something funny and quickly readable. After looking for a while, I chose Brand new friend, by Mike Gayle.

Mike Gayle writes a kind of chick lit for males (actually for both genders, I would say). In this book, a guy (Rob) is asked by his long-term girlfriend to leave London to live with her in Manchester. Besides having to move, that also means leaving behind his best friend. At this point the book shows how difficult can be to find new friends once you’re past your “university years”. Rob tries to meet new people quite unsuccessfully for a long time, but he eventually finds a friend, who happens to be a “she”. From then on, the book revolves around the question: “Can a man and a woman just be ‘best friends’”?

The book fulfilled my expectations (which were low ), it was funny and I had already finished reading it when we were flying over New Orleans. Definitely not a life changing book, but a compelling read nonetheless.