The Embiggened O # 962: Laugh? We Almost Emigrated

Happy days are here again, particularly for Maxine Clarke over at Euro Crime, who – it would seem – had a good strong quaff of giggle juice before she read our humble offering, THE BIG O. The gist of the review runneth thusly:

“THE BIG O is a fast-paced and very funny book … I don’t often laugh out loud when reading, but I found this book hilarious … Comedy capers are hard to pull off. Most of them spiral out of control or lose their freshness after a few chapters. That isn’t the case here: Burke effortlessly ratchets up the tension, rings the changes of the perceptions of reality between the characters, provides an element of farce, a few choice set-pieces, some neat observations of domestic minutiae, and keeps the laughs coming.”

All of which is entirely lovely, although if we’re honest we’ll point out at this stage that we were actually aiming to write a bleak tale of perversely life-affirming existential deprivation, a la Sam Beckett. Ah well, maybe we’ll get it right next time …