'Bleak Expecations' by Mark Evans

In keeping with the chaotic nature of the Radio Four show on which this book is based, Mark Evans has written a novel which is more a series of sketches than a typical parody and I suspect that the style used owes much to his work on That Mitchell and Webb Look.

The story follows the unfortunate childhood of Pip Bin, a young man ripped from his home by an insane mother and a malevolent guardian, Mr Gently Benevolent, a name which, as Evans frequently notes, is touched with more than a hint of irony.

Given that Pip is assisted by a gentle and generous man called Skinflint Parsimonious, you soon gain an impression of Mark Evans' thinking.

Pip is sent to a brutal school under the gaze of a headmaster known as Mr Hardthrasher - the first of many of the Hardthrasher clan to appear in the book. Under pain of imminent death and via a meeting with his sister, he soon escapes with a new found best friend Harry Biscuit.

Harry is, in common parlance, a few spoons short of a cutlery set and he is used as a device whenever Mark Evans is short of something to distract the characters. In fact, his lack of common sense is somewhat overused to get the characters back into their latest scrape with Gently Benevolent or one of the Hardthrasher family.

Not that the direction or plot of the book are overly important. It is more of a loose set of vaguely related Victorian scenes with a few deliberate anachronisms thrown in occasionally.

There is plenty of hilarity and I found myself laughing on quite a few occasions but the book lacks a consistent plot and sometimes has a slightly clever-clever feel.

Worth a look but a bit inconsistent in quality.