Customer Reviews

Deadlines: A Novel

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The comedy of W. A. Harbinson's Deadlines is black, very black indeed. Deadlines satirises the world of 'men's magazines' and is set in the 1970s, when these enjoyed the peak of their popularity. Harbinson skilfully uses his 'inside knowledge' to turn the true world of male interest magazine publishing upside down and inside out to exploit the (at least, then - if not even now) popular perception of this world to the fullest and to its satirically rip-roaringly funniest. He mercilessly takes the proverbial fluid out of the world of men's magazines as well as hysterical Women's Lib and 'political correctness.' The results are hilarious.

Deadlines never titillates or seeks to shock. The use of some good old Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is essential here in order to reflect the milieu, and were it dispensed with would leave the story utterly castrated.

As ever, W. A. Harbinson proves himself the master storyteller. Deadlines is set in a world where men are still men, of a sort anyway - male chauvinists one and all at least to the point where protecting their gonads suddenly takes priority and in itself becomes the cause of their virtual emasculation. Even the absolute terror of the word 'deadlines' is as nothing to their near-paralytic dread of the shapely shock-troopers of an extremist feminist organisation.

One of the most 'politically incorrect' novels since that ghastly concept (re-) appeared in the modern world, W. A. Harbinson's Deadlines is also the funniest black comedy of the late twentieth century and remains unsurpassed. It is a firm favourite here, read in record time, a little more than an afternoon (I am a fast reader), as I just couldn't bear to stop.

More than just compelling, W. A. Harbinson's Deadlines is an absolute must read for anybody with an intact, healthy funny-bone.