Title: Old Fashioned Fun
Product review: One night, bored, I went to see Marcel Theroux read from his debut novel at a local bookstore. I enjoyed the old-fashioned wit of his excerpts so much I ended up buying a copy--something I am not prone to do. It took half a year, but when I finally got around to reading it, it was exactly what I expected: a gentle, witty tale of a country bumpkin's move to London to work for his great-uncle's newspaper. There are a boatload of supporting characters who are all utterly believable, with their own quirks and entertaining agendas. One small criticism is the silliness of character names, which slightly detracts from the overall assuredness of the writing. There is a lot going on, but it all resolves more or less satisfactorily, as is the norm in fish-out-of-water stories of this ilk. The one area that could have used a bit more attention was the history of the hero's grandfather. A promising debut.
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