Customer Reviews
Great writing, entertaining read - By: Bluebell, 02 Mar 2008 
I didn't get the outbursts of laughter of some of the other reviewers but I did thoroughly enjoy Michael Frayn's lively writing style & found the book an entertaining mix of satirizing the vanities & follies of human behaviour but done in a kindly way that made you sympathize with the characters. I can imagine that if you are a journalist there would be things about the descriptions of working for a newspaper that would give extra enjoyment.
I think that this book would probably appeal even more to men than women rather like PG Wodehouse.
Entertaining in parts but inconsistent - By: Caterkiller, 17 Jan 2007 
Lets get this straight. Very little of the action of this book takes place in Fleet Street; it is mainly concerned with the travails of a couple of sub-editors trying to find direction in life. The characters are well sketched but the plotlines (such as they are) appear flimsy & ephemeral. The central characters are not particularly likeable, Dyson is suffering a midlife crisis which manifests itself in self-obssessive behaviour, & has assistant, Bob, is a weakwilled nobody, dominated by his neighbour & fiancee. The book would be improved if more focus was placed on the activities of the newspaper as this would at least differentiate it from far superior comic novels such as Sharpe's "Porterhouse Blue" or Amis's "Lucky Jim". The closing chapters cover travel-nightmare territory done much better in Lodge's "Smalll World" whereas the character of Morris, who joins the cast far too late, appears to have been copied directly from Wodehouse's "Psmith Journalist". Pretty average.
A great comic novel - By: kimbofo, 19 Apr 2004 This book should come with a warning: don't read in public. Honestly, I have not read such a humourous book in a long time. It is laugh-out-loud funny.
It's set in London at an unspecified newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street. While it's a story about journalism & its struggle with changing work practises & the emerging "glitterati" of television broadcasting, it's essentiallly a comedy of manners.
At the heart of the story are two journalists - the older, more uptight & ambitious John Dyson, who is anxious to find an easy route out of his mundane job, & the younger, more laidback & directionless Bob Bell, who doesn't have the courage to dump his girlfriend. The two of them work in the crossword & nature notes department but spend most of their time in the local drinking establishments complaining about their jobs & their workloads.
Through their day to day struggles, Frayne is able to tackle some big themes - old school journalists coming to grips with an emerging tide of bright, young & worryingly efficient graduate trainees; newspaper journos trying to break into the much better paid field of broadcast journalism; the class system; how to get on the property ladder; & race relations - but he does it very deftly & with great humour.
Towards the end of the Morning was written in 1967, but it holds up well as a modern classic. And Frayn's use of dialogue is spot on. He captures the art of conversation very well, often with more than three or four people speaking at once, very tricky if you've ever tried to do it yourself. It is perhaps Frayne's ear for dialogue that has made him such a gifted & much-praised playwright (Copenhagen & Noises Off are two of his more well known ones, although he has written 11 others).
All in alll, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It would appeal to anyone looking for a fast-paced funny read.
The classic comic Fleet Street Novel - By: , 14 Jan 2002 
Written in 1967 (at that time, the present day), the book is set in a Fleet Street which no longer exists. Wapping has long since superseded Grub Street, both in work practices & in technology. Frayn, in hindsight, gives us a fascinating insight into newspaper journalism as it was, not as it is now.
The setting is a monolithic & nameless Fleet Street Daily. Dyson, 40's, a married, mortgaged dreamer & father of two, is head of a backwater covering nature notes, crosswords & "yesteryear". His staff is Bob, an aimless 29 year old single graduate & old Eddy Moulton, nearer the end of his days than he realises & compiler of the "100 Years Ago This Day" column.
Dyson dreams of recognition, wider success & celebrity status but seems unable to escape the lethargy of the work, despite attempting occasional, febrile bursts of it. Bob's chief office activity is eating toffees from a bag in his desk & writing vacuous love letters to his young girlfriend Tess at her finishing school. Eddy spends his days poring over yellowed back numbers & lives wholly in the past.
Life has continued in this way for aeons. What little work done is confined to the late morning, before the staff repair to the pub for the obligatory journalistic liquid lunch & gossip with the other staff hacks. The editor, a distant, shadowy figure, has never been seen by anyone. He communicates, Howard Hughes - like, by note. At one point, he attempts to sack the pictures editor, the embittered Reg. Mounce, using an unsigned memo. Reg., believing this to be a joke perpetrated by his peers, ignores his dismissal, carries on with his job & is still employed weeks later.
The afternoon passes in the customary beery trance until the deadline approaches. In Dyson's
department of course, this has no effect whatsoever, given the timeless nature of the copy. Their only indication that the deadline has passed is the distant rumble of the presses below.
This routine is set to continue for ever, until three things happen. Eddy Moulton dies quietly at his desk, undiscovered for hours; Dyson is asked to appear on late night television with a panel of experts & Bob's girlfriend arrives with marriage written in capitals at the top of her agenda. The comic pace is fast & furious. Eddy's death creates a vacancy for Erskine, a talented, capable & laconic graduate who, within weeks, has taken over the department by stealth.
Dyson has too many pre-TV appearance gins in the hospitality suite and, on air, can say nothing but "how fascinating", again & again. Helpless Bob, loved by Tess, mothered by Mounce's wife & platonicallly & confusedly desired by Mrs. Dyson, progresses not one of these relationships & fails to take his one chance to escape. It is Erskine, a chilly precursor of the '80s yuppie, who finallly wins the rewards.
Frayn's background in journalism as a Guardian & Observer columnist is clearly on show throughout. He uses more than just pale shades of his former colleagues, alll finely drawn and
convincingly set in their now vanished dusty Fleet Street offices. How hard it is to imagine any one of them surviving today's frenetic newspaper world! The fast paced, witty narrative carries the reader compulsively from one comic episode to the next, right through to the hilarious climax. Read this accomplished, sophisticated novel. You will not be disappointed.
A brilliant comic novel - By: Chandler, 24 Jan 2001 Whilst the journalists have left Fleet Street & the Lunchtime O'Booze is a thing of the past, this book feels very contemporary in its description of London: the middle class professional buying property in a destitute 'up & coming' area, the lure of television, & the tedium of work.
Brilliantly written- economical, trenchant, extremely funny. Justifiably compared to 'Scoop'
Highly highly recommended (in fact, better to my mind than 'Headlong')
