Don't Try This at Home

by P.Z. Reizin

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0747270562
• ISBN13: 9780747270560
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Headline
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 9.1" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Slapstick humor and poignancy combined

I couldn't put this book down, mainly because I was laughing so hard. It's an absurd story, yet the characters are amazingly well-crafted and the broad humor nonetheless contains a moral that creeps up on you rather than smashing you in the face. Charles is a television producer of a British version of "Candid Camera". At the start of the story, he is approached by a woman in a bar who is looking for her blind date. Being attracted to the woman, he lies and says that yes, he is her blind date, even though it turns out the blind date is a policy wonk working for Tony Blair. Even though this lie is uncovered pretty quickly without serious consequence, the real fact that Charles is not quite sure who he is--is he Charles or Charlie, is he over each of his last two girl friends or not, does he want to bed Kate, the blind date girl, or either of the two co-workers whom he doesn't want to separate--becomes the real story of the book. Two identity issues, one from an anonymous phone caller and the other from the fact that he can't escape the consequences of a prank his show pulled that ended in tragedy, follow him throughout the story, leading him on a merry chase first to France and the unwelcoming arms of an ex, and then to the west of England where he disappears into a new character but still cannot escape his own identity. Everything is done with a high humor and sense of absurdity--Charles' own and our own sense looking down on him--and the most unrealistic situations, such as two old men following Charles and his gangster captor across Dartmoor at night, somehow seem perfectly natural in the context of the unreal life Charles has led. It's a fun book, extremely well-written, and poignant.