#BlogTour – #BookReview of #TheHaHa by Tom Shakespeare @TommyShakes @Duckbooks @RandomTTours #RandomThingsTours

calturner

April 8

I'm delighted to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for hilarious social comedy The Ha-Ha by Tom Shakespeare. Thank you to Anne Cater and Duckworth Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this lighthearted and entertaining book.

About the book:

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.
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.

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/

My Review:

Written by disability advocate and TV personality Tom Shakespeare CBE, The Ha-Ha is a fun and refreshing homage to the books of P.G. Wodehouse, bringing them bang up to date as it tells a story that touches on themes including disability, race and the LGBTQ+ community.

A blistering social commentary wrapped up in an hilarious feel good comedy that will make you laugh out loud one moment then bring a lump to your throat the next, Tom Shakespeare has written a fun and lighthearted read with a diverse and interesting cast of characters that I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end. I love books that shine a light on disability in a positive way and this book certainly does that.

Fun and heartwarming, The Ha-Ha is a laugh out loud funny book that is pure escapism at its very best and I loved it! With larger than life characters that touched my heart, this is a book that doesn't ever take itself too seriously and is all the more entertaining because of it.

Tom Shakespeare's writing and razor sharp wit is second to none as he tells the story of Fred who is about to turn 40 and has invited an eclectic group of friends to celebrate at a rented stately home. Paralysed in a car accident, Fred has been writing his memoir and is longing to meet up with his old university crush, Heather, who is now a highflying TV correspondent.

With spot on characterisation and a storyline that keeps you engaged throughout, The Ha-Ha is an hilarious feel good read that moves along at a cracking pace. With a missing memoir, a hungry pig and a group of very different people, what started out as a jolly weekend begins to turn into something else entirely…

A fantastic book that I loved, The Ha-Ha is an hilarious and uplifting read that I would highly recommend.

The Ha-Ha by Tom Shakespeare is available to purchase now:

Check out what these other fabulous bloggers have to say about this book: