Book Reviews
"The trouble started on page 22, when I got some
pretty nasty looks from fellow passengers in a Tube train marooned between
Mornington Crescent and Camden Town; later that night my wife complained
that my giggles were keeping her awake. It got worse. There's surely no
need to say more?"
- Jeremy Brooks, Sunday Times.
"Thank you, David Nobbs, for 'The Death of Reginald
Perrin'...reading it on a train became embarrassing when the good, glum
folk around me began to nudge each other and raise their eyebrows."
- Wendy Monk, Birmingham Post.
"If the true test of a humorous novel is to make
us titter in public, then 'The Death of Reginald Perrin' passes with flying
colours, since my snorts and chuckles having drawn attention upon me in
trains and cafeterias for two whole days together... satirical comedy of
no ordinary order."
- Derek Stanford, The Scotsman.
"There is a wild snort of laughter on every page."
- Nina Bawden, Daily Telegraph.
"Reg Perrin is one of the funniest characters ever
to emerge from the world of the suburban commuter."
- Peter Grosvenor, Daily Express.
"This is delicious entertainment, as comic and as
sharp as they come, and not a hundred miles away from the world of early
Evelyn Waugh."
- Robert Nye, The Guardian.
"Nobbs' humour proves as robustly vulgar, as shrewd,
and occasionally subversive as it was a quarter of a century ago."
- Sunday Times.
"Reggie Perrin is a sweaty, charming, paunchy, sad,
hilarious man. He inhabits an intriguing, mundane world. A world in which
everyone jogs along quite nicely, and then, suddenly out of the blue, nothing
happens. But in a most exciting way. A world where the ordinary suddenly
occurs when you least expect it. Our world. But, unlike most of us, Reggie
sets out to change it. His failure to do so is completely successful. I
laughed two hundred and eighty-seven times and cried twice. What a beautiful
book."
- Ronnie Barker.