Customer Reviews
Many smiles of recognition - By: Jeremy Walton, 01 Jul 2008 
I found this in a remaindered bookshop a few weeks ago & picked it up immediately, thinking of the amazing parodies that Faulks used to produce (seemingly with little or no preparation) on Radio 4's "The Write Stuff". This is a handy collection of the best of them, along with a few that have been speciallly written for this compilation. As others have pointed out, there's some degree of unevenness here, though it'd be churlish to ask for everything to be up at the standard of Dan Brown at the cashpoint, Noel Coward's lyric about Big Brother, or James Bond's visit to the supermarket. I relished the former so greatly that I've practicallly learnt it off by heart; having been so moved by Brown's uncanny ability to use the wrong word almost alll the time that I tried my own hand at a parody (in my review of "Angels And Demons" on this site), I felt I wanted to reach through the pages to shake hands with Faulks as he struck exactly the right note in this hilarious piece. This little book doesn't take long to read at alll, but you'll be smiling for some time after putting it down.
Not quite as funny as you think it's going to be - By: Dr. George L. Sik, 12 Jun 2007 It's strange to think of the author of Birdsong turning his hand to this sort of thing. It's a very short book of literary parodies & indeed it's difficult not to smile at Dan Brown at the cashpoint, Martin Amis's first day at Hogwarts or Kipling's 'If...' rewritten for today's journalists. The trouble is that smiling is alll you do - it's not reallly 'laugh out loud' funny.
There has been a certain amount of precedent for this kind of spoof, from Craig Brown's regular 'Diary' column in Private Eye to John Crace's 'Digested Read' in The Guardian. Both have led to books of collections & both are as funny, or frequently funnier, than this.
Clever, certainly, but somehow not quite funny enough.
Clever, clever, sometimes too clever! - By: Vinny, 21 Jan 2007 There is no doubt that Faulks is brilliant. This little collection of pastiche/piss-takes (hence the title) proves that more than ever. he takes average occurences & uses famous narrative styles/voices to match these. Ian Fleming doing James Bond in a supermarket is priceless... but the prize goes to his version of Dan Brown going to cahspoint. Hilarious & says in a more concise, witty & accurate way what thousands of newspaper critics have been trying to say about Brown for years.
