3. Happy Baby - Stephen Elliot

Written in reverse order, it takes a few chapters to get used to the style and is harder to follow than movies such as Irreversible and Memento, which are done the same style. It is a very accessible style of writing, and at first I didn’t realise that it was a faux-memoir of sorts - as it was simply done in such a creative way. The language used to very simple and easy to read, but that also kept me stuck into it - it’s like ‘The Da Vinci Code’ in that sense.

However, also like ‘The Da Vinci Code’, it was hard to believe and had too much going on. There was a striking similarity between this and ‘A Million Little Pieces’ by James Frey, in that some of the things happening were just surreal. Believable at a stretch, but surreal. It differs however that it goes all the way back to his childhood - when he once naive and reasonably content. It’s saddening to think that many other kids are growing up in a similar way these days. The reason it went back all the way was so that the reader could be shown how, from a conventional kid, he grew up to something different as a result of his upbringing.

It reminded me of many of the other books out these days where ‘real’ people write their stories of their upbringing and how horrific it was for them, as a sort of counselling for themselves. However, this differed in the way that the author didn’t seem to be focusing on the bad, he didn’t make the reader feel sorry for him and the way it was written is definitely more fictional. To a certain extent, I liked this book, but as it goes on, you begin to think that it is just another story written by somebody feeling sorry for themselves which put me off slightly.