Jilly Cooper, Tackle!

 First Jilly Cooper I have tried to read, and had to abandon it after 100 pages. It's not my normal read, but it got good reviews from normally trustworthy places ' Infectiously joyful and funny' in The Observer, for example. I knew it was going to be a guilty pleasure rather than high literature, but that's fine, and as a poolside read it should have worked. It was execrable from the very beginning though.  A novel about football written by someone who knows nothing about football or how to write. The characters are all paper thin and the situations so contrived. I very nearly stopped reading after the first sentence 'Rupert Campbell-Black, despite being one of the most successful owner/trainers and one of the handsomest men in the world was in the darkest of places.'  The first few paragraphs explain how his wife has cancer, his factotum has betrayed him and has 'assassinated' his favourite horse. I stuck with it despite the absurdities, hoping for some wit and gossip. It's just dire though. Jilly Cooper seems to be aware that football crowds sing, so makes up songs for them that show none of the wit, knowledge or references of real football chants - sample 'You'd better go back to racing, Campbell-Black. Poor old Searston will end in tears soon. They're going down, You'll lose your crown, Poor Prince charmless, Your side's quite harmless.' in the novel this is greeted with 'howls of laughter and tumultuous cheering'.  I've  been to a fair few football matches, and I shudder to think what would happen to anyone who came up with chant 'Your side's quite harmless'. There are so many awful punning nicknames that don't quite work - the team's Czech midfielder is 'the pouncing Czech'. The loud mouth keeper is called Barry Pitt, so is 'Pitt Bully' . It's like Jilly Cooper thinks of a nickname she thinks is funny and and then gives a millisecond of thought to a character for the name. Loads of people love her books though, so she's obviously doing something right.