Danny Wallace - Friends Like These

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Danny Wallace – Friends Like These | Review

Danny Wallace – Friends Like These | Review

Published on May 4, 2016 by danecobain + in Authors U-Z (By Surname), Non-Fiction

Title: Friends Like These

Author: Danny Wallace

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 410

Rating: 9/10

Danny Wallace – Yes Man

Friends Like These is a lot of fun – it tells the story story of what happened to Danny Wallace when, as an adult, he decided to try to get in touch with his former childhood friends, with predictably hilarious results. Danny Wallace’s work is always funny, and it’s somehow made even funnier because it’s true, and he has an easy-to-read writing style that it’s hard not to love.

And one of the interesting things here is that, in stark comparison to some of the other things that Wallace has done, like accidentally forming a cult and agreeing to say yes to anything that came his way, this book is somewhat relatable because deep down, I think all of us would be interested in seeing how things turned out for the kids that we grew up with. We might not want to hang out with them for long, though – that’s why we have things like reunions, I guess.

But Wallace has a gift for characterisation, and he’s great at bringing his friends to life in his writing in a way that not every author can manage. You can’t really call them characters, because they’re based on real people, but he still manages to bring them to life out of the pages just like any great fiction writer should be able to do. And it’s actually his interactions with these people, coupled with Wallace’s unending enthusiasm and vaguely cynical optimism, that makes this book as entertaining as it is.

Danny Wallace

I’ve said in other reviews that Danny Wallace’s work is good because it has such an appeal for everyone – I still maintain that, and so I’d definitely recommend this to pretty much anyone. In some ways, you’d be pretty weird if you didn’t enjoy it – it’s so simple, so entertaining, and just so damn interesting that there aren’t many other books on the market that are like this. So why wouldn’t you want to read it?

So that’s about it from me, although I have another sixty words to cover. I just can’t go into specifics because I want to leave that for you to discover when you read it, but trust me, it’s worth reading. I’ve actually read it a couple of times, and whilst I probably won’t read it again, because it isn’t quite *that* good, I still enjoyed it.