Funny Girl by Nick Hornby
Before I get into the actual review, I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL for so long! The bug of college/revision/looking for a job got to me, and this has been on the back burner. However, I have read quite a few books in the past few weeks, and Funny Girl was one of these!
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
good writing, good idea, didn’t like the ways he presented LGBT+ characters and it got REALLY BORING
(Ooooh, a cool integrated Goodreads view! Let’s see how this goes…)
First off, I really enjoyed the premise of the book. A girl in the 1960’s runs off to London to become a comedienne, challenging stereotypes of women in that age and bringing in a lot of history as well. I’m a sucker for a book with a good bit of history integrated with it.
I also really liked the social perspective it brought, as well as the addition of gay characters (I like me some casual LGBT+ representation). However, LGBT+ representation aside, this book was written by someone who doesn’t identify as LGBT+, which is something that I did bear in mind whilst reading the novel, but I felt like his depictions of gay characters were very historically accurate, if somewhat stereotypical.
When people mention Nick Hornby, the novel that springs to mind is About A Boy (but mainly because I love Hugh Grant and ‘Something to Talk About’ was a song from my childhood), and I almost picked that one up off my library shelf. Will I be reading that after this? Well…
The writing was fluid and I really enjoyed his style, but it was deathly boring in sections. It seemed incredibly repetitive and tedious, especially in the middle section.
So, overall, I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars, with an A* for effort. The execution could have been so much better, and Nick Hornby definitely tells instead of showing.
If anyone’s read any of his other books and can tell me if his other novels are worth the read, please let me know! I’d like to read more than one to get a bigger perspective, but I don’t want to waste my time.
