Customer Reviews

How to Kill Your Husband

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a hoot,especially if you have a dry warped sense of humour as I do-a must read.

I was unsure what to expect from this book, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't it. Humorous, intriguing and engrossing, anyone who has ever been a wife or mother will relate to the scenarios that arise as Lette explores the world of the modern working woman. I do think the author is a tad cynical and perhaps a little bitter, but the book is enjoyable nonetheless.

Kathy's writing can sparkle and shine and she is extremely clever and funny. However, I didn't enjoy the endlessly graphic sex and I think I am a little over the "I do everything and my husband does nothing" lament.
The story is basically about three friends - one (Jasmine) is married to an inhumanly humane doctor who rushes around the world helping people; one (the narrator Cassie) is married to a slob, gorgeous though he is; and one is married to a man who is happy to be the baby of the household. The book starts with Jas in jail for murdering her husband. The rest of the book is Cassie's recounting of how it happened that Jas got into that predicament.
It is a light read, and enjoyable in parts - but I think I need to Lette myself read some other things!

I expected a Bridget Jones type book, but this thing was god awful. The humour was predictable and cliche. It just wasn't funny. If you are looking for something with no intellectual implications and just to keep you occupied on the plane or bus, it may be for you.

I have not laughed so hard in a long time.
A different kind of humor.
With a title like it has, I just love having it sit on the table in my living room !
Several friends are waiting to borrow it.
Really enjoyed it.

Kathy's newest is quite similar to its predecessors. There are large dollops of sex and even larger dollops of puns and other exhibitions of cleverness. The novel is a putative murder mystery, with the protagonist's friend arrested for dispatching her husband, whose body has not yet been found. Actually, it is a long meditation on what is here characterized as a quite real battle between the sexes, with actual casualties, truces and peace treaties. Set in north London but, as always, with Australian overtones, Americanisms and Yiddishisms, the story moves along briskly. There are few scenes that are leg-slappingly funny and the protagonist's alternation between tears on the one hand and sailor language on the other are, if not implausible, at least unattractive. The scenes at her school, with an autocratic headmaster and smarmy rival, are among the best. This is not the best of the Kathy Lette novels but her readers will doubtless enjoy it, even with its sharp edges.