Diary of a Somebody

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When Toby goes missing, just after the announcement of the publication of his first collection, This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, Brian becomes the number one suspect. Word play, laugh-out-loud poems and the deft skewering of office life are part of the fun in this brilliant comic debut. Nobody must find out about this unique gem, because I’m giving it to EVERYONE, and I want to appear clever and discerning. Photograph: Alamy View image in fullscreen Diary of a Somebody focuses on Brian, a 45-year-old sad sack with a yen for custard creams.

A combination of traditional story peppered with pithy poems about love, life, music through the ages and family dynamics.But there is an obstacle in the form of Toby Salt, his arch nemesis at Poetry Club and rival suitor to Liz, Brian's new poetic inspiration. A welcome reminder of the joy to be had when you put yourself in the hands of someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative . In 1892, George and Weedon Grossmith published The Diary of a Nobody , now a classic of comic writing. Meanwhile Dylan’s football team keeps being beaten 0–11, as he stands disconsolately on the wing waiting vainly to receive the ball.

If you like wordplay, puns and funny poetry, put Brian Bilston’s Diary of a Somebody on your wishlist. I absolutely loved this book and found myself chuckling for days at the penguin in the freezer, the man at number 29 and Toby Salt's poems. In this case the person hurt is not the hero clown (who is seems blissfully unaware of how dysfunctional he is). I can see why Brian Bilston is such a popular poet and he seems like the kind of person with whom you'd share a few pints. Everyone i've loaned or recommended the book to has enjoyed it and i'm sure i will read it again - no greater compliment as far as i'm concerned.It sounded like a modernised male version of Bridget Jones Diary, which I really enjoyed reading (about 1/4 of a century ago). I spent the book with an irritating feeling that I'd read something previously with a similar tone, but never identifed what it was. Part tender love story, part suburban murder mystery, part scathing description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a unique, original and hilarious novel. Most people's diaries would be quite boring I suspect, but Brian's life is just so fraught with calamity and misunderstanding that the banal becomes interesting, even though it's not dramatic. A really light-hearted read, comprising many humorous and clever poems and amusing day-to-day events as Brian tries to cope with his boring job, his mad next-door neighbour, the members of his poetry club and book club and his broken marriage.

Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a unique, original and hilarious novel. William Hartston * Daily Express * Word play, laugh-out-loud poems and the deft skewering of office life are part of the fun in this brilliant comic debut. It is gentle and tender in all the right places, filling my need for a book to wrap me up in a hug whilst I read it. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.So here comes Brian Bilston, using his gift of turning the mundane, the everyday into a diary entry and/or a poem, using the power of wit and the ability to mine the language for puns and other delights. The brilliant thing about this whole structure is the way the banalities of life are turned into rhyming ditties and entries in the diary which are so wonderful to read.