A review quoted on the back cover of this book hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned: “It is Connolly’s skill to get the reader to laugh at what should make you cry or at least wince”. I did laugh – it was all funny but there were some bits where the laughter meter hit ten – the two policemen with their misplaced vowels...the éclair on the tea trolley...Rambling Rosie at the end. But I felt uncomfortable about it. Given that the very first scene has hapless husband Kevin being brutally attacked by his wife Emily, who is armed with a coffee table, it doesn’t feel like the stuff of comedy. People tend to overlook the many male victims of domestic violence, and by making it funny, this book does those victims no favours. I thought to myself: what if you swopped the genders around in the book – and Emily was the one being attacked with a coffee table – it’s unlikely this book would have made it to publication, and instead would be exchanged under plain cover in murky corners like the most illicit porn. If anything, it underlined how male-female equality is still a way off.

As I was reading it felt as though I was clinging on to a hot air balloon, gliding over the rooftops, every time there was an injection of humour it kept the balloon buoyed up and everything was great; on the other hand every time the book’s resident creep Raymond invoked the C-word or indulged in any kind of sexual activity, air belched out of the balloon and I was barking my shins on the chimney tops.

The other notable feature of this novel is authorial voice – it’s not a first person narrative, nor is it entirely a third-person omniscient narrative. Instead the narrator hovers amongst the characters, like a puppeteer who can’t keep his bonce out of view, offering chirpy little observations. There were shades of Harlan Coben, but what it reminded me of most insistently was the Mr Men books. It was all the “Do you know what happens next? Shall I tell you?” type of thing that made this read a bit like a worked-up Mr Men book for adults (that would be “Mr Henpecked” or quite possibly “Little Miss Repulsive”). It works the other way too, with a bit of name substitution: “Do you know the thing that really got on Mr Tickle’s tits? The thing that was really bloody getting to him? I think you maybe do.....”

I left it a few days after finishing reading before reviewing this book. I wanted to get the laughter out of my head to see if it still seemed funny in retrospect. I’ve got to admit it does. (Fairy liquid in the whipping cream. Snort.) But I still feel guilty. ( )