Cultural Dessert

‘May Contain Nuts’ by John O'Farrell

21 January 2008

The literary career of John O'Farrell seems to be following a course plotted by Nick Hornby. Having found success with a heartfelt and very funny memoir ('Things Can Only Get Better'), O'Farrell's first novel ('The Best A Man Can Get') was extremely enjoyable and cleverer than it initially appeared. He followed this with a similar second novel ('This is Your Life') and a couple of collections of his newspaper columns. Now, just as Nick Hornby did in 'How to be Good', John O'Farrell has written a novel where the first person narrator is female. 'May Contain Nuts' is the cutting edge tale of rich families in Chelsea desperate to get their children into a good school. He has lots of fun at the expense of four-wheel-drives, private tutors etc but I found it a bit predictable and I wasn't really convinced by O'Farrell as a woman.

Labels: Books

posted by Robin Simpson @ 6:34 pm