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The Art of Failing: Notes from the Underdog by [Anthony McGowan]

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Anthony McGowan

The Art of Failing: Notes from the Underdog Kindle Edition

by Anthony McGowan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

16 ratings

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An Observer book of the year

HAUNTED! By endless tiny humiliations.

STRUGGLING! To resurrect the corpse of his literary career.

ENSNARED! In a loving yet bamboozling marriage.

A man at odds with the universe, Anthony McGowan stumbles from one improbable fiasco to the next. On the mean streets of West Hampstead he reflects upon all that is at the heart of life itself – socks with holes, underwhelming packed lunches, broken washing machines, Kierkegaard, liver salts, British Library eccentricities and disapproving ladies on trains. In this chronicle of one man’s daily failures and disappointments, McGowan can’t help but speak his mind – with cringeworthy and hilarious results.

Length: 288 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled	Audible Narration: Audible Narration Switch back and forth between reading the Kindle book and listening to the Audible narration. Add narration for a reduced price of $4.49 after you buy the Kindle book. Ready	Language: English

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'A book that will ultimately make you smile, and re-read'.--BookBag

'A children's book writer and school lecturer who swears like a sailor and adds smut wherever possible. McGowan's as close to a Python character as one could reasonably fear. There's no stereotyping Anthony McGowan.'--San Francisco Review of Books

'Consistently amusing, charming, and occasionally rather touching.'--Big Issue

'Humorously chronicles the quotidian frustrations, discomforts, and outright failures...faced over the course of one year... McGowan always brings a quirky and refreshing perspective... Entertaining.'--Kirkus

'Perfect to dip into for entertainingly bite-sized anecdotes.'--Observer

'The funniest book was Anthony McGowan's The Art of Failing, which alternates self-mocking slapstick with flashes of weirdness reminiscent of Gogol.'--Observer, Books of the Year

'There is no sharper, funnier, cleverer writer in Britain today than Anthony McGowan.'--Robert Twigger, author of Micromastery

'He fails spectacularly successfully it has to be said. If cringe-worthy embarrassment were a superpower, Anthony would be an Avenger. It is Pepys' diary if Pepys were a middle-aged, 21st-century Smiths fan with athlete's foot. You'll laugh and feel mild pity.'--Matt Haig --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Book Description

A laugh-out-loud chronicle of one man's daily failures and disappointments --This text refers to the paperback edition.

ASIN : B0735JWV9H
Publisher : Oneworld Publications (7 September 2017)
Language : English
File size : 2208 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 288 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 1,533,690 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 777 in Parenting & Family Humor
- 1,460 in Parenting & Families Humour
- 12,903 in Humour Fiction

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16 ratings

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4 star		8%
3 star		9%
2 star		9%
1 star		8%

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mrs c l watts

Hilarious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 December 2018

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Great read, makes you feel quite normal in your everyday life and ‘failings’. Would definitely recommend as I laughed plenty and couldn’t put it down.

One person found this helpful

Jane Roberts

McGowan deservedly joins the ranks of the great diarists (think Pepys and Mole hybrid) in this delicious ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 January 2018

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McGowan deservedly joins the ranks of the great diarists (think Pepys and Mole hybrid) in this delicious addition to his already much-lauded oeuvre. He excels in his comic artistry with the ease of the Dalai Lama at a meditation conference. With a broad Northern accent. And suspicious edible (or not-so-edible) items stashed in his pockets. Radio and television producers - this is crying out to entertain listeners and viewers! Until then - enjoy it as a reader.

PMMC

Hugely enjoyable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 October 2017

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Hugely enjoyable; funny, poignant, cringeworthy. Leaves me making lots of different sounds, faces and gestures(chuckle, snort, sigh, harrumph, grin etc). I got very engaged in Anthony's life.

Amazon Customer

Dull for me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 January 2018

Verified Purchase

I think maybe 3 or 4 "days" made me laugh but in my eyes the rest was fairly dull. A diary of the random occurences to the author didn't work for me at all. Maybe it's just not my type of humour as it seem to have overwhelmingly positive reviews. I recommend you try a sample - the whole book is the same as the first few pages.

2 people found this helpful

Rhetorician

Read It

Reviewed in the United States on 5 June 2018

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A glance at the cover of McGowan's book made me suspicious: one blurb on the front cover, one on the back, and both are by Matt Haig, a fellow mid-list British author. Couldn't the publisher find anybody else (even one other buddy) to tout The Art of Failing? Or is inadequate blurbing just another example of the author's failings?

Of course the "Anthony McGowan" who narrates this journal is a comic invention of the author, as is his wife "Mrs McG." Right? And the failings recounted here are semi-fictional or quasi-factual or . . . does it matter anyway?

I really wanted this book to succeed, and despite misgivings I've already begun recommending it to others. There are passages here that are so funny and so deftly delivered that I had to reread them aloud to my cat.

But there's a problem as well: the book is about 100 pages too long. A smart editor would have cut the most tedious and wince-inducing entries, deleted all the overworked conceits and references, and (right off the mark) excised pure hokum like "The Williad" (but "My friend Billy" must stay). Clearly McGowan can't be trusted to edit his own failings so a Oneworld functionary should have been hauled in to do the job for him.

Ah, but who cares? The single paragraph dated February 4 ("But We Both Know the Truth") is alone worth the price of admission. Read the book and write your own damn review.

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