This is a collection of funny pieces built around the themes of bureaucratic madness, mortality and the absurdity of life. It is a mix of autobiography and fiction.
The book begins with an account of Noorali’s experience of working in the NHS. The detached tone flatly tightens to an accumulated hilarity – similar to the deadpan delivery of The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills – until this escalating hysteria results in laughing out loud.
Bureaucracy is explored through the impact it has on individuals, The Kingdom presenting as a cross between Kafka and EastEnders.
Other pieces are thematically consistent: Mortality and Cost Benefit – as in I Am a Fan of Dogs – riffs on the cost of keeping a dog, riddled with ailments, that his daughter loves.
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This follows the first bravura section. The fact that we are introduced to the author’s wife and daughter (neither of whom he had in the first section) is a clever illustration of how life moves on and on, revealing the relative insignificance of the day-to-day, relative to the span of a life and the waiting void of death.
Car Park B is a brilliant and funny metaphor for the pointlessness of life and work. The Numbers is a dark and witty story about an office suicide prevention plan that causes the problem it sought to solve.
As the book progresses, there are hilarious reveals, through a well-placed word that makes you realise the terrible nature of what has happened. These subtle revelations are a hilarious recurring device.
In My Dinner with Aziz, Noorali recounts regular dinners with his father, a failed, deluded businessman who always meets him at Pizza Express because he always has vouchers for Pizza Express. It is funny but also moving.
A couple of stories don’t work as well but overall this is a funny and insightful book with a unique comic tone.
Kevin Gildea is a comedian and critic
