Seasonal Suicide Notes by Roger Lewis

Published : April 10, 2010 :: 12:04:10 [ 4,000 views ]

A book for those millions of souls for whom nothing has gone according to plan and who are as mad as a bag of monkeys, but introducing a sprinkle of humor and life becomes okay. Do not judge this book by its title. Seasonal Suicide Notes may sound depressing, but it isn’t.

The author writes: “There are some of us who are always going to be born in the wrong era… this book is therefore a personal bulletin from the frontline of a 21st-century existence, where at the rainbow’s end there is no pot of gold”. Humor is a powerful weapon in the war against bullying, crassness, depression etc, which the writer believes is ruining the lives of ordinary folk.

In Suicide notes, the writer takes us on a tour of his private life and what a life it is. He takes a trip to London, stays at the Groucho Club, where in it’s bar he spends an evening drinking with an indiscreet Member of Parliament, “Wish I could remember his name.” (a touch of diplomacy I feel)

He tells us of a trip to the Cannes film festival which ends in acrimony, then a voyage up the Amazon with Maureen Lipman and Rosie Boycott that turns, he says, into “a glimpse of hell”

On his birthday he takes his son to the doctor: “I have to sit with the spluttering old folk, the bank rings to say I’m overdrawn, and then a tooth falls out. It was my birthday and I was visibly disintegrating before my loved ones.”

Yet no matter how grim the circumstances, the writer manages to raise a laugh, often at his own expense: “I glance at myself in the mottled mirror and Leonard Rossiter grimaces back.”

This book is stacked with humor, occasionally the language is frank and often rude but it is always redeemed by the wonderfully observed funny side of the world he encounters.

Warning: Those with a delicate disposition may find the coarse narrative difficult and hard to appreciate. He tells us that he hates, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, Alan Sugar, Harold Pinter, watching Morris dancing, Weddings and all Advertising of any kind, but he loves Carry On films, Steam Trains, Big Funerals and the actress Liz Smith.

A book that is very readable and to be read alone, as giggling to yourself in public is often viewed with concern. Roger Lewis is better known as a biographer, has written books on Laurence Olivier, Charles Hawtrey (actor in ‘Carry On’ films), Peter Sellers and Anthony Burgess (author of ‘A Clockwork Orange’) This book then is a departure from his biographies and possibly the funniest book of 2009.

Patty Brown