What's so funny?

15 comic novels which actually are.

Here’s a funny thing (pun intended): I am easily amused - or maybe just a cheap date? -however, I very rarely laugh out loud when reading. I slightly resent being told that a book is “hilarious” or “laugh out loud funny”. The more I am told a novel is wildly amusing, the less I am likely to find it so. I also take issue with very black humour: please see my issues with The Bee Sting, which was brilliant, but funny? Sure, learned critics, knock yourself out chuckling as a family falls apart at the seams…

I’m the same with live comedy - very rarely do I find it elicits proper laughter. (I realise am making myself sound like so much fun…) Years ago, I went to see a very famous comedian with my mother - but the moment which made us laugh the most the whole evening happened on the way there. We were listening to The Archers. (For the uninitiated, this is a BBC radio soap opera set amongst farming folk. Written down, I can see this looks very, very odd and distinctly niche.) A female vicar was having an affair with a married landowner and Lynda Snell (an interfering but good-hearted busybody type) remarked “beneath those robes beats the heart of a woman”. My mother and I still repeat this to each other from time to time.

I have been thinking about this since the shortlist for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction (not a pithy title) was announced this week. The winner (announced on December 2nd) receives Bollinger champagne, a complete set of the Everyman’s Library PG Wodehouse collection, and - best of all - a pig is named after their winning book.

Et voila - the shortlist:

Thoughts? Opinions? Your winner/pig?

Rootling around in the annals of the past, I note that in 2018, no prize was awarded as none of the books submitted incited the requisite “level of unanimous laughter”. And this neatly encapsulates the problem: it is very hard to find a novel which is considered universally amusing. Earlier this year, The New York Times ran a feature on the funniest novels since Catch-22 which lost me from the start because I find Catch-22 disturbing not amusing, and it made me think the list would be populated by a whole host of novels written by Big American Men (big as in status not necessarily girth).

So, having thrown down the metaphorical gauntlet to - ahem - myself, herewith 15 books which amuse me. I may not laugh out loud, but I am chortling on the inside… And I would love further reading, so do by all means leave your suggestions in the comments.

Excellent Women - Barbara Pym

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury...' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.”

Barbara Pym’s note-perfect comedy of very English manners, social climbing and ill-advised liaisons is one of my favourite novels. Mild-mannered spinster Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and one of the exemplary "excellent women" of the title whose excellence is taken for granted by everyone around her. She finds herself inviegled in the lives of her neighbours (with whom she - horrors - shares a bathroom) anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky; Julian Malory, the vicar (who is in danger from a designing minx type); and Everard Bone, an anthropologist who thinks Mildred might like to type up his notes (for free - naturally). Pym is peerless.

Just William - Richmal Crompton

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