I confess I was slightly naughty here. I wasn’t supposed to buy any new books in March was I? However the book I was supposed to receive this month that was pre-ordered last year[*] won’t now arrive until April so I put this in as a substitute. Plus I’d just heard it reviewed and it sounded like the kind of thing I’d enjoy. Sometimes you just have to break the rules.
The Man Who Forgot His Wife concerns Vaughan who suffers a sudden attack of amnesia where he forgets pretty much everyone in his life. He forgets what he did for a living, his friends, his family and as the title suggests of course, his wife. So he has to start to re-build his life and these relationships. The only problem is that he’s in the middle of divorcing his wife and he no longer knows why.
I definitely enjoyed this book and read it in a couple of days. I’d say there were only a couple of laugh out loud moments but I was smiling most of the way through. O’Farrell writes warmly and sympathetically about marriage and family life, and particularly the way in which it’s not always a bed of roses. It’s not quite at Nick Hornby levels for me, who is my gold standard for these kind of topics, but it is very readable and fun.
7/10 – occasionally profound, often funny and always warm-hearted.
[*]I’m aware I keep talking about this without saying what it is. That’s deliberate.
