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Title: Save your money
Review: I've long been a Tom Sharpe fan, but "The Midden" just doesn't live up to his previous books. Three specific criticisms:(1) it's just not very funny. Sure, there are occasional amusing passages, but nothing that gives rise to the uncontrollable laughter we've come to expect from Sharpe.(2) a lot of the writing is gratitously nasty. Sharpe's writing has always been 'edgy', and that's okay ... but here he includes long irrelevant passages, filled with unnecessarily coarse language. The personal attacks on Margaret Thatcher and John Major strike an unpleasant note, too.(3) much of the book reads like a badly done pastiche of "Blott on the Landscape" and "Riotous Assembly".
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