Book Buffet

Friday September 4, 2009

Anything but bliss

Review by SHARIL DEWA

Growing Pains Of A Hapless Househusband

Author: Sam Holden

Publisher: Arrow Books, 389 pages

SAM Holden lost his job and is forced to be a stay-at-home dad and husband. Picking up where the first book, Diary Of A Hapless Househusband, left off and, again, written like a diary, Growing Pains Of A Hapless Househusband sees our protagonist still battling his new role in life.

To the outsider, Holden's life is idyllic and free from the stress that plagues other working men and women. Sam even encourages this faux perfect picture of his life as a househusband. However, in private and in confessions to his wife, Sally, Holden's life is anything but bliss.

His days are filled with squabbling and crying children (Daisy and Peter), meals that do not reach their intended potential, and tedious day-to-day routine.

Sam has contemplated returning to the rat race but fears that he has lost the energy, drive and mental capacity that full-time employment requires of him. "It is all that endless hours of watching television that deteriorated my mind," he writes in his diary.

To rectify the money issue, Holden develops a pilot project for television: WonderHubby, a show to help those individuals living on the edge (such as: parents whose children don't take well to parental authority).

Though the idea of a media consultant developing a television programme is realistic, and having the concept picked up by a television network seems plausible, making Holden a television star seems far-fetched, especially as he has no prior experience in television. Apart from watching a lot of it.

While the ups and downs which Holden faces have an air of reality, it all becomes somewhat surreal when Holden, via WonderHubby, becomes a minor celebrity. That just does not suit his personality. I would have found it more credible if Holden had created something more realistic, such as a radio programme, or had remained behind the scenes of WonderHubby rather than being the star of the show.

Because of its diary format, the Hapless Househusband series appears like a cross between the Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones series. However, while the former is about everyday life in provincial Britain and the latter, a glimpse at the modern single British working girl looking for romance, Holden's diaries are a window to the landscape of fatherhood and the trials and tribulations that go with it.

If comparisons must be made, the Hapless Househusband diaries can be seen as the male version of Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It, a novel about a working mother who is forced to give up her career for motherhood and the problems she faces as a full-time mum.

Interestingly, the character's name, Sam Holden, is also the pen name of the journalist author, and it seems that he based parts of Holden's househusband experiment on his own real-life experience when he swapped roles with his wife for a while.

Perhaps that explains why I find Holden's metamorphosis into a TV star too much of a stretch: TV is obviously not the journalist's area of expertise.

As a stand-alone book, Growing Pains, plot holes and all, is an engaging read, especially if one skims over the TV programme plot. But as it comes on the heels of the more realistic Diary, Growing Pains feels like a letdown. Well, they do say sequels seldom live up to the original. But it's disappointing as Holden's adventures in fatherhood were rather engrossing in the first book.