Meet Fred. He is about to turn forty and has invited an eclectic group of friends to celebrate at a rented stately home.

He is a wheelchair user after being paralysed in a road traffic accident, has been busy at work at his memoir and is longing to reconnect with long-standing university crush, Heather, a high-flying TV foreign correspondent. What should have been a jolly weekend in the country starts getting decidedly more complicated when Heather realises that the publication of Fred’s book could threaten her career ambitions.

#TheHaHa @TommyShakes @Duckbooks #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour

The Ha-Ha is a thoroughly engaging and very entertaining novel about friendship, sex, hallucinogenic drugs, marriage and putting the past behind you. There is also a very hungry pig who may or may not have eaten Fred’s stolen memoir.

It also proves that you can write about disability without making a big fuss of disability and that you can pay tribute to the immortal world of Blandings without ever including a PG Wodehouse character.

My Review

“…you can pay tribute to the immortal world of Blandings without ever including a PG Wodehouse character…” The pig comes closest.

And in The Ha-Ha we have a pig AND a dog. What could be better than that? And a seven-year-old with a very good aim with a bow and arrow, but that comes much later.

Something I love about Fred Twistleton is that he never seems to resent his disability, which resulted from an accident twenty years earlier. He’s always happy and cheerful, and that must be hard.

This weekend it’s his fortieth birthday and he’s having a party. He’s rented a stately home called Threepwood and invited his brother and sister-in-law, his friends from university and their various partners and children. Well one child actually, with a penchant for murdering the recorder – Freya only knows one tune Frère Jacques – and follows people around playing it.

Fred doesn’t always see eye to eye with his brother Roddy, a budding MP, and feels rather sorry for his wife Charlotte. Polly is probably his closest friend, mother of aforementioned Freya, who shares parenting with her ex-partner. Then we have Hugh, a socially awkward eccentric who is staying in his van rather than the house, Robin the psychiatrist who is bringing his Costa Rican boyfriend Alberto, and Sonia the literary agent who has promised to read his memoir. Except none of his friends want him to publish the memoir because they know their secrets will be revealed and together they hatch a plot to make it disappear. This involves a large document, a memory stick and a very greedy Vietnamese Pot Bellied pig.

Fred has a ‘long-standing university crush on Heather, a high-flying TV foreign correspondent‘. Except we all know she’s totally unsuitable as a life-partner and to make matters worse, Fred has a terror of naked women, following his accident. Nel, the pig’s ‘carer’ is far nicer, but will Fred realise that before they leave?

And did I mention there is also Fred’s lazy pug Humphrey?

‘Less of a dog, more of a pop-eyed hot water bottle.’

The whole thing is hilarious, witty and well-written. I would certainly read more by this author. Especially if the next book includes more unruly animals and children.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Tom Shakespeare CBE is a social scientist and bioethicist, an academic who writes and talks and researches mainly about disability, but also about ethical issues around prenatal genetic testing and end of life assisted suicide. Born in 1966 in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, he studied at Cambridge University and has lived in Gateshead, Geneva and Norwich, while working at Universities of Sunderland, Leeds, Newcastle, then at World Health Organisation in Geneva, afterwards at UEA Medical School, and presently as Professor of Disability Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Tom has presented programmes and documentaries on BBC Radio and has written for publications including The Guardian and The Lancet, alongside talking to academic, professional and lay audiences around the world. He has been a stand-up comedian, an actor, a dancer, and an artist. A father of two grown-up children, he now lives in London. https://farmerofthoughts.co.uk/