It's 2:15 in the morning when the phone rings. What a great start to a book.

It's set over the course of an evening and has flashbacks to tell you the story of Polly and General Kent. Polly is very liberal and General Kent - well he is the other spectrum. Over the course of the book not only do you learn their story and why he has made contact with her 15 years later but it also touches on some interesting topics and gives you two different points of view.

Polly wants to save the world, have world peace, have fair and equal rights for those in 3rd world countries and make a difference.
The General doesn't want gays in the army, women in the army and is an army man through and through. It's very interesting seeing the different points of view.

This has a good thread of humour running through the book - but it's humour that makes you laugh once you think about it. Not slapstick american humour.

An entertaining book. Might be triggering for those who had issues with stalkers.

I have read a couple of Ben Elton's other works in the past and quite enjoyed them (one was a Big Brother type spoof, the other vicious satire of crap like Pop Idol). And both were better than this one.
The whole story is set over about three hours, but the flashbacks that set the context span about seventeen years. The structure of the book is quite dodgy, the flashbacks would have been better together as the first part of the book.
The characters are wooden and to dimensional, caricatures in fact (especially the background characters such as Peter's Mum and the milkman - what has the author got agains milkmen?!) and the final reveal of General Kent's intention is just bonkers and completely unbelievable, and to top it all off an attempt to give it a happy ending? Mental.
Ben Elton has written some clever, well structured, witty and enjoyable books. This is not one of them.

What a horrible book.

I started this book on a plane journey once, many years ago. I think the person next to me fell asleep and left it on their tray and I thought why waste a good opportunity to read!

The start is very interesting as you are trying to figure who is who, and where this story is likely to lead.

As I recall, the book owner woke up at one point and was more than happy to allow me to carry on reading. As the plane came into land, they even said that I could borrow it and return it to them by post... Probably because they must have been in the middle of the book at that time!

The middle meanders and seems to take too long to get through. That's always my worry about reading or watching a 'situational comedy' - will it have the legs to go the distance?

I started to suspect the twist towards the end, but I was gripped again and enjoyed the climax.

I came across my copy in the window of a charity shop a few days ago. Worth the 50p? Just about. I don't think it has aged well, so much has changed in the world since this book was written and because of the characters, you are constantly reminded of that change and it becomes difficult to fully immerse yourself into it.

I also have a confession to make... I couldn't remember where I'd left off all those years ago, so I started from the beginning!

n  Trigger & Content Warningsn

Statutory rape (theme)

Just okay. A little bizarre but an easy read.

DNF after reading about 10%. Couldn’t get interested in the Jack storyline so decided to cut my losses.

Liked the tongue in cheek writing but the lack of plot and unlikeable characters made it less enjoyable. Seems like it would make a good play, but the narrative goes round in circles too much to love it as a novel.

This was a re-read for me. I always enjoy Ben Elton's writing style, and I had forgotten enough of the book that it mostly felt like I was reading with fresh eyes.

I liked the premise, the confluence of people and events over the course of one night, and thought it was cleverly played out.

My biggest niggle was the wrap up at the end felt like it was trying to stuff too much epilogue into not enough words. Apart from that, highly enjoyable.

DNF’d after listening to 26% of the audiobook.

I’m more than a quarter of the way through and the most interesting part for me is that Polly has a stalker. I honestly couldn’t care less about her relationship with Jack and his sudden return so I went ahead and read up on what happens. Happy with my decision to DNF.

I've long meant to read the novels by Ben Elton, a writer whom I have admired for his movie and television work of comic genius such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Blackadder, and Love Actually. This is his fourth or fifth novel, and I figured that me must have been able to shift into a new medium with some success, not to mention that I had seen some recommendations for his novels in places that I usually trust.

Unfortunately, this book didn't work for me. I did finish it, but I think that was due in part to my not wanting to start another book so near to my recent vacation and that I was actually reading it quite quickly. The problem here stems from Elton's choice of comedic material: the juxtaposition of an ultra lefty in the person of Polly, who once protested the American presence on British soil by chaining herself along with a group of other female peaceniks to the gates of the military base, and Jack Kent, an ultra righty who was one of those American soldiers, now risen to the rank of General and on the precipice of becoming the next head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Neither Polly or Jack are believeable characters, which usually isn't a problem in a comedy novel, as believability often takes a back seat to exaggeration. But by making them opposite sides of the political coin, some of their aspects are not so much exaggerated as inconsistent, especially in the use Elton puts them into service of the thin plot. They are, instead, means by which Elton proceeds to skewer both political persuasions and this might work if they weren't each so full of straw that his darting arrows not only pierce but proceed to explode the propped up dummies, to extend and exaggerate the metaphor. He also is exceedingly graphic, especially in his portrayal of the physical attraction of these opposites in the backflashes to their initial meeting, which is more squirm-inducing than arousing. As the book works inevitably to the climax, and as Elton has his characters move around to the spots where everything will proceed as he wants, he has to have them repeat themselves to the point of annoyance. Halfway through the book, I debated if you could make a drinking game out of every time Polly demanded that Jack answer why he had returned after 30 years and then revealing that she was still attracted to him. It's the kind of thing that might have worked in a screenplay, because it could have been excised by the director or editor.

Compared to books by other British TV alumni such as Stephen Fry or Hugh Laurie, this was a major disappointment. I'm hoping that this was just an off-book, and that Elton's others are much better. It may be some time for me to try one of those after this book, though.