THE YEAR OF THE JOUNCER by SIMON GREY

Those of you who loved his first THE SMOKING DIARIES, will have snapped this one up. It is possibly not quite as achingly funny - there is a lot more about his childhood and, though I have no idea why - chidhood is often a rather serious business. But wait until you get on holiday to the hotel in Barados and starts sending back postcards to Harold and Antonia, who are to join them later...

Simon Gray is a natural diary writer and he does what diarists should which is reveal himself without showing off, if you follow.  He emerges as a lugubrious character with a mordaunt wit and a jaundiced eye - what a lot of cliches - for his own foolishness. The foolishness of the rest of the human race is in there too but Gray is never unkind, never mean, never point-scoring though he has not a gram of sentimentality in his body either.

How can you not love a man who always goes to bed just as the rest of the world is getting up, not because he is on night-shift but as if it is a perfectly normal thing to do ?

I love this book. Love it, love it, love it. I have re-read it, right through not just in snippets, three times and I daresay that I will read it again often. Perfect.