This hilarious novel from best-selling author David Jester will have readers laughing out loud and squirming in discomfort in equal measure.
A sequel to Jester’s An Idiot in Love, released last year, An Idiot in Marriage is a no-holds-barred account of the trials and tribulations of hapless Kieran McCall, a man who has somehow found himself in the land of adults without any kind of map.
Last time we met Kieran we found him desperately looking for that special someone, going from one amatory disaster to another until, finally, meeting his soul mate and settling down.
As this new instalment’s title suggests, we now journey with him through his married life. He’s a father now and has responsibilities, but he’s still firmly a ‘kidult’ whose heart may be in the right place but who manages to always get it wrong – no matter what ‘it’ may be.
An Idiot in Marriage follows Kieran as he learns to live with the strains of married life and parenthood, from dealing with incompetent babysitters and dirty nappies to neighbours from hell and stray ducks.
The book can be read as a standalone novel and is set out into chapters that are almost self-contained short stories in themselves, each focusing on a comic situation that sees events rapidly escalate from bad to appalling, before being neatly (or as neatly as could be hoped for in Kieran’s chaotic world) resolved.
His aptitude for staggering social ineptitude, for instance, invariably leaves him on the wrong side of his parents-in-law, with his attempts at polite conversation somehow always seeming to return to the subject of ‘unnatural’ sex acts with his wife.
His uncensored, unfiltered accounts of everything from accidentally kidnapping a cat to helping his sex-starved best friend find a prostitute are delivered with a comedic bluntness that puts the tone somewhere between Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em’s Frank Spencer and those cheeky but harmless British sex comedies of the 1970s.
But though the author clearly exaggerates for comic effect, his descriptions of the challenges of parenthood – the sleepless nights, the feeling of not being ‘qualified’ for the job – are grounded in reality.
Coming across as Bridget Jones meets American Pie, An Idiot in Marriage is not for those who are easily offended but certainly holds plenty of appeal for readers who appreciate good old-fashioned earthy humour.
That said, the love that Kieran clearly holds for his wife and child makes us root for him despite his endless indiscretions, especially towards the end when it looks as though he might have made a screw-up too far that could cost him his marriage.
It’s not a book for those who want a romanticised view of married life, but if you appreciate the absurd, bawdy and outrageous then you’d be an idiot to miss it!
An Idiot in Marriage by David Jester (Skyhorse Publishing) is out now, priced £11.99 in paperback and £9.99 as an eBook. Visit www.david-jester.com