[close] <blockquote> Her: "What if I told you I didn't love you any more?" Me: "I wouldn't believe you." Her: "But you wouldn't ever give up trying?" Me: "Nah. Some things you can't give up on, can you?" </blockquote> Mike Gayle became the popular prince of romantic comedy overnight with his first bestselling novel My Legendary Girlfriend. With Mr Commitment he's back with a tale of the modern male that delivers its punchlines directly to the heart.

The world of aspiring stand-up comic Benjamin Dominic Duffy is shaken to its uncertain foundations when his adored girlfriend Mel revokes her previously held opinion of marriage as "an outmoded concept created by a patriarchal society to keep women in their place" and, on bent knee, proposes to him. Mel, "a living, breathing, moving version of Chrissie Hynde singing "Brass in Pocket"," is the girl of his dreams--but Duffy's dilemma is that marriage is still his worst nightmare. Dan, his best friend, flatmate and fellow bath-dodger counsels him to retain The Ways of the Bachelor, while Mel's best friend Julie--known as Nosferatu due to her bloodless dislike of all things Duffy--urges her to rebuff his increasingly desperate attempts to regain her affections. When a blissful reunion is sabotaged by domestic rites of passage through IKEA, Duffy resolves to "become a bachelor boy like Dan--a superstud of seduction, a he-who-will-never-again-come- off-worse-with-the-chicks, a righteous dude committed to anything but commitment." But when even TV's Hottest Totty media-babe Alexa Wells cannot help him become a success as a stand- up--in more ways than one--Duffy begins to wonder if he's given up all for nothing.

Gayle has an eye for the soulful romance and wry comedy in the utterly ordinary, and Mr Commitment marries heartfulness and hilarity with a yearning that stops comfortably short of the sentimental. --Rachel Holmes [close]