Mike Gayle is the reason I first ever got into lad lit and after reading this book about infidelity and friendship, tinged with heartbreak and sorrow with a touch of
A Christmas Carol thrown into it, I soon remembered why.
When Joe Clarke wakes up with the hot office intern, panic sets in. He does the classic man thing – claiming he can’t remember what happened, but as some of us have learned the hard way, that rarely gets us out of trouble.
It’s not long before his wife Penny rumbles him and takes off with the kids. Joe vows to be a better man to win his family back, and help is going to come from the most unlikely of places, namely his recently deceased girlfriend. Yep, you read that right! Joe has his very own ghost of relationship past. It sounds strange, but it works.
As a reader you buy into what Joe is going through – the disappointment in himself, the regret of what he is has lost, the determination to get his family back. What Gayle does with his male lead characters is make them real. You feel the emotion as though you’re one of Joe’s mates that he is confiding in.
The real stars of the book are perhaps the other members of the Divorced Dads' Club, who rally around each other as they share their tales of woe. Men don’t share their true feelings at the best of times, but Gayle deals with this brilliantly as he intertwines their stories into the novel.
All in all, Gayle proves again why he is one of the best at writing about normal male blokes, and he does it in a style that makes you want to know ‘what happened next’ long after the final page has been turned.
