A funny-peculiar first novel about a woman lurching through life that will challenge your preconceptions
ara Pascoe’s debut novel draws you in slowly and then all at once. The first line is fairly standard. The second, a little less so. Still, if you skimmed the first chapter, it would be easy to think you knew what you were getting: your basic, by-the-numbers quirky-girl-meets-boy romcom. This is because that is exactly what our narrator wants us to think. She’s trying very hard to be basic! And she wouldthis to be a romcom. “I hope since our chat he thinks I’m normal,” she confides cheerily.
She is Sophie; he is Chris. They met working “on the buses” taking tourists round London; now Sophie works in a pub and Chris is buying a drink, and he doesn’t remember her at all. Or does he? Part of the joy of Weirdo is not knowing what to expect, or rather in having your expectations subverted by Sophie’s smoothie-maker of a mind. You put your preconceived ideas in, and Sophie – or rather Pascoe – shakes them all about.
“It occurred to me that Australia might be a trick,” Sophie thinks, stepping off the plane there. “The people could be actors. But that was the jet lag. I accepted that Australia was real, because the trick would cost many millions and why would anyone invest all that money just to humiliate me?” Sophie accepts it, but she’s not completely convinced. Sophie takes nothing for granted. The world is all askew, and Sophie steps through it tentatively, as braced as someone walking on a waltzer.
: the crowdfunding hell of modern weddings, the bitter rivalry of unlikely sisters, the kinds of shit jobs people have when they move to London without a plan. Sophie has worked on the buses, as a “scarer” at the London Dungeon and now in a horrible unnamed pub chain. All of these are very funny. Pascoe is equally good, though, on the unfunny bits.
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Weirdo by Sara Pascoe review – the standup’s bravura debutA funny-peculiar first novel about a woman lurching through life that will challenge your preconceptions
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