The front cover promises 'a novel about life, love and a pig called Estrakhan', with a prominent picture of Harry Hill to imply this book trades on his silly wit more than being a serious literary endeavour.
brilliant...
The book is funny in places, and there are some inspired set pieces and parodies. The mixture of real life celebrities, pulled from the pages of heat alongside political figures such as Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping alongside zanily named creations like Zevon and Meerox Haintree make for a heady brew of oddball digressions that somehow weaves into a series of interconnecting plots.
but...
I'm doing an Open Uni course on creative writing at the moment and one of the techniques suggested to get the creative juices flowing is a freewrite, where you pick a subject and just note down a stream-of-conscious style passage or two. Flight From Deathrow feels very much like an extended version of such an exercise. It's exhausting trying to keep up with all of the asides and wanders down narrative cul de sacs. It feels like Hill uses celebrity names in the hope of being automatically amusing, and it may be odd to see Bobby Davro's name in a strange context once, but when this is done chapter after chapter, things get a bit wearying. I expected more from this book, certainly more laughs, but Deathrow reads too much like it is aimed at the people who can name Kardashians or X-Factor finalists.
briefly...
A disappointing piece of fluff from a very funny TV star. I'll stick to TV Burp from now on, and so should Harry Hill.
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