Customer Reviews

Me Bandy, You Cissie (The Bandy Papers, Vol. 4)

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I see no one has reviewed this, so how can I pass up an opportunity to plug this book?! Let me tell you that, if you like Douglas Adam or Pat McManus, you will love Donald Jack and his hilarious main character, a Canadian WWI ace named Bartholemew Bandy. This is the fourth book in a series of eight, and the author manages to make each one better than the last. On top being tremendously funny, the story is beautifully written as historical fiction, the characters are well-developed and the times are captured just perfectly. Read it and weep (you will laugh 'til you cry!).

I have been a huge Bart Bandy fan for over 25 years, so much so that neither my bedside table nor my bathroom book rack has been without one of the first three books in the series in longer than I can remember.

I bought this book used through Amazon and was eagerly awaiting the chance to finally add to my collection, but this has to be one of my greatest literary letdowns ever.

The humor had lost all its spontaneity, and the continual references to past books were strained and neither had nor provided context. The joy of the first three books was the way in which comic hilarity mixed so well with genuinely sensitive character development - I almost cried when Katherine (Kattering?) died in "It's Me Again". In this 4th book, it's all gone.

I highly recommend all three of this book's predecessors, and for anyone interested in a study in contrast, buy this book and reflect on the time invested by Mr. Jack in introducing Katherine Lewis and her quirky ways. Then compare that to the rapid-fire was in which he gets Cissie in the sack for reasons that I have yet to understand.

This book has the feel of a work produced because the author was under contract to do so.