Instructions for Living Someone Else's Life

by Mil Millington

Chris Mortimer goes on a bender one night in 1988 and wakes to find it's 18 years later and he's married to someone he doesn't know. He's still stuck in his hateful job and he's an alcoholic to boot. Things are not looking good. This relies on humour to examine what is actually a poignant situation

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature, Time Travel

262 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Mil Millington is a British author of humorous books. He first came to public prominence as a writer when he created a web-site entitled "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. The site's main content was (and remains) anecdotes describing arguments and misunderstandings between Mil and his German girlfriend Margret, mother of his two sons. The site was hosted on Wolverhampton University's servers, but Mil was required to remove it when it was pointed out that certain people failing to spot the site's intended humour might find a way to be offended by it. Such was the popularity of this site that Mil was offered a publishing deal, and wrote a novel with the same title as his web-site, but with new content, published in 2002.

He has since gone on to write A Certain Chemistry (2003), Love And Other Near death Experiences (2006), and Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life (2008).

Mil also is the co-creator of the site www.TheWeekly.co.uk, and has contributed to several newspapers, notably The Guardian and the Daily Express. His fans can subscribe to his irregular on-line newsletter.

The Guardian newspaper named Mil as one of the five best debut novelists in 2002. His works have been translated into Japanese, Russian, Dutch, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hebrew, Spanish, and Serbo-Croat.

He is known for a liking for computer games, for having unusual hair-styles (including bright scarlet hair), and for taunting Americans for their inability to spot irony.

Mil is currently working on the screenplay for Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About for Working Title films. He lives in England's West Midlands with his girlfriend and their two children.

Reviews

[Jeremy]

So, Mil Millington takes us on a tour of the fabled "mid-life crisis" of the modern day mid 40 year old. Of course, none of us would ever admit that our pains were MLC so his hero finds himself waking up one morning convinced that he was out the previous night as a 25 year old, argued with his, then, girlfriend, and got blind drunk (not that any of us didn't do that, even 10 years later...)and that it was her fault he got drunk.
Our hero, Chris, sees his life, his job and his friends as they are now but through the eyes and experiences of himself as he was at 25. We are taken through a roller coaster ride of Chris, the 25 year old habiting the 43 year old body and life, trying to fix what he doesn't like (no chance as we all know, gravity and over indulgence can't be overcome) and coming to terms with what he has. Its a shame that Mil describes some experiences in so much detail, the story doesn't need it and the humour it produces isn't worth the effort so all it does is spoil the read (or am I just getting old myself?). I love the last segment of the book, when Chris hunts down his girlfriend of 18 years ago, the scene is described with Tom Sharpesque eye and just shows how pathetic we all can be.
The book combines laugh out loud humour, finger pointing realities and a helpful guide to all men "of a certain age" as they come to realise that now they can affors to insure the lamborguini, they'd actually prefer the Ford Focus.

[Karen]

This was an intensely irritating book. The prose was so stodgy and overworked - like bad pastry - that most of the humour was lost amongst the overlong metaphors, musings and unfollowable trains of thought. And for what? Absolutely no incredible insights or outcomes, or even a decent conclusion. A nice wee passage on the relationship between sex, love and friendship, and also a very cool quote:

'Your internal logic is impeccable. If only more people solved life's problems by asking themselves, "What would Gandalf do in my position?"'

but otherwise a damp squib, and I won't be reading any more of his stuff.

[Astrid]

2.5/5

[Karen]

Mil Millington's latest book is about time traveling. Not of the strict science fiction type, but of the type that occurs normally to every one of us without noticing.
Chris Mortimer is a 25 year old guy in the 80's who wakes up one day and all of a sudden realizes that he is 43. He finds himself working a job that he hates and next to a woman he barely knows but who has been his wife for fifteen years. He decides to reconnect with old friends and get to know his "new" self, and to try to find out what he has been up to for two decades. During his quest, he discovers that he has become a very different person from the one he hoped to become when he was in his twenties. On his way to becoming a grownup, apparently, life happened.
"Are you -are we, all of us - formed from a character that is innate, or are we the product of the experiences we've had? Nature or nurture?" - Chris wonders. The book is thought-provoking, funny, and brilliantly written. On the surface it entertains with its plot and characters, but on a deeper level it raises interesting questions. Are we the cumulative result of all the things that happen to us? How much of who we are inside is influenced by the body outside, and where that body finds itself?

[Kim]

I didn't like the writing in this as much as Mil's other books - it felt like every single sentence was packed with as much wit and creativity as possible, which made for slow reading. His earlier books were less dense and therefore the cleverness was able to shine through easier. If you're feeling like you're not too happy with where you are in your life, the story can be either a downer or a kick in the pants depending on your mood.

[Lainie]

Big Mil Millington fan here. Not the best of his novels but still offered several laugh out loud moments. A good, fast read with space to set it aside when needed.

[James]

It's an indication of how low your expectations are when a 3 star review is still better than you'd anticipated. This was mainly due to the acknowledgements at the start, which can be summarised as 'brace yourself, this author thinks he's really funny'. Add in a hackneyed concept of waking up in another (older self, in this case) body and I would have given you long odds on managing to finish it.

Fortunately, in the book itself, Millington managed to actually make me laugh, and create a sympathetic group of characters. As long as you didn't question the set-up too much, it was ok, although you would also have to be fairly forgiving of the self-indulgent philosophising, when characters' brief appearances seemed to be included solely as a vehicle to give his thoughts on the world. The sheer amount of it grew tiresome, as did the endless jokes based on being unaware of a pop-culture reference.

The main saving grace was the dialogue, which was genuinely funny. In what was a generally quite slapstick book, sometimes there was a degree of subtlety that would catch me by surprise, and the exchanges were far, far stronger than the interior monologues. This was partly because the humour came from interaction rather than signposted jokes (which rarely work for me in print) and also because I didn't buy into the characters' thoughts. Though I can't say this with any personal authority, the older characters seemed to think and behave like caricatures of how boring middle-aged people are, in a life based around petty domestic disputes and little else. Rather than a bond over a shared life experience, Chris could have changed his wife for any other woman in her 40s as he seemed only to value her company, not her as a person.

As a result, I came away thinking a lot of Millington as a writer but it wasn't quite the polished article. To make a fairly unoriginal concept enjoyable was a good feat, but put that talent to a good plot and I think it could have been a fair bit better, especially as the end was a bit facile too.

[Mollie]

I‘ve had my doubts from the beginning. And sadly I was right. The ending disappointed me big time. Mil Millington takes a long time describe the thoughts of a person, which makes for a very slow paced story. Also he doesn’t really give the reader anything to figure out. It seems like there is nothing to figure out apart from the obvious.

[Sarah Anderson]

I loved this book! What happens when a 25 year old wakes up in his 43 year old's body, finding out how little he has made of his life (as well as not knowing people who are now in it ... like his wife!).

He confides in one friend and then sets about working out how he can get back to his old life, whilst navigating the new one

The writing style is great - a really easy read.

[Jonathan Haden]

A worthwhile laugh. Not going to set the world ablaze but certainly glad I read it

[Laura]

Awful.

[Lady B of house Sefer]

I really wanted to enjoy this book. But it was just soooooo slow. At least it had a happy ending. Are dudes really that simple? I'm kidding, of course they are.

[Sarah Goodwin]

Not my favourite book by this author, I liked 'Things my girlfriend and I have argued about' and 'Love and other near death experiences' far more.

The thing that made this book difficult for me was a lack of information that had me constantly flicking between pages. The side characters were hard to tell apart, as they had no distinguishing characteristics, except Andy the sci-fi lover, and even then I had to wait for a reference before I realised who it was speaking.

The little asides into other people's lives started about a third of the way into the book, and they confused me because it wasn't for another five chapters that those characters were mentioned again. So I'd forgotten who they were and what they'd been doing when I'd last seen them.

I didn't get on well with the protagonist either, I found him a little bit of an arse really, not in a pleasing, identifiable way, as I had with the main characters of LAONDE and TMGAIHAA, but in an insufferable 'why is everything so shit when I'm so brilliant' kind of way. Which was changing by the end, but made his internal monologue a bit of a trial.

One particular moment that bothered me was the little 'essay' on how all women have lost their virginities twice 'not letting a thing like semantics get in their way' (I quote inexactly). 1. I found this rather a nasty thing to say, and 2. as we were supposed to be seeing things from a female point of view at this point, it didn't reall fit in. Maybe it was just me being too sensitive, but it stuck in my mind and bothered me for the rest of the book.

There were a few moments that were genuinely sweet, and I liked the ending very much. Some of the insights into love and life were quite profound (if overwritten in places) and I liked how the amnesia/timetravel question was resolved.

In fact the book is very well written, but personal taste meant that I found the plot a little bit of a struggle at times.

It was, as promised by the cover 'laugh out loud' funny on occasion, but those occasions were fewer than in previous books by this author.

I would recommend reading LAONDE instead, but I will go on to finish reading the rest of this author's work.

[Derek Baldwin]

A man in his mid 20s wakes up one morning to find that nearly 20 years have passed.... Setting aside the fact that this sort of story was the plot to just about every episode of Red Dwarf ever, this was pretty entertaining and funny. While it doesn't outstay it's welcome, I felt that the story just sort of petered out as if the author had got bored of it or been commissioned to write a few Guardian articles, or something. The exact same thing seemed to be the case with the other 2 of his books that I've read. There were also several (short) chapters which had very little relevance to the overall story e.g. a 2/3 page chapter about some ex-grilfriend of the hero, who we'd previously never heard of, but who is then revealed to have been the love of his life (the bit he'd forgotten). But this never goes anywhere and she is never mentioned again... it seemed like the author maybe wrote this with a view to the story following a different branch, only it never did. I think Mil Millington could do with a more brutally honest proof reader or some kind of mentor who will help him tidy up these sorts of loose ends.

[Thomas]

Just finished this. As a fan of Millington's, I was going to read this one (the fourth of his literary attempts) regardless of how good it was. To my pleasant surprise, Mil has figured out the art of writing. Although still somewhat linear and predictable, it felt like reading a real author. He also is moving on from simple witty insights to deeper social commentary (although still somewhat in the Tsk-Tsk fashion). Infused throughout with his brand of humor, this book actually leaves me looking forward to his next.

[Patti]

It was one of those books about half way through you can't wait for it to be over. Maybe if I was a middle aged man going through a mid-life crisis, I would have found it more entertaining. I gave it three stars for the few laugh out loud moments in the first half. I think he had a great concept of waking up one day and finding you're the person you never wanted to be. The characters could have been so much more developed then they were. The main characters endless rants are what started to bore me. There were just too many of them.

[David]

If you like Millington, you'll enjoy this book. It's not as crafty or witty as TMGAIAA, and it's a slight departure from his other novels. The theme and righting style are a little more sophisticated. Without giving anything away,...the book is about a guy, age 25, that suddenly finds himself in a 43 year life and body. I may be a little biased, I'm in my 40's and enjoyed his surprise with all the falters with body, life and mind.

[Louise]

I really enjoyed this. Very quick read, very entertaining, very like-able main character.
Chris goes out partying one night and the next morning when he wakes up, it's 18 years later..he's married to a stranger and still has the job he was going to quit the next day. Being 25 one day and 43 the next has got to mess with anyone's mind, but Chris handles it pretty well....funny, sweet and goofy; it's a treat from this witty writer.

[Tania]

reserved from library - copy from pcl


quotes#349578

Because Chris's thought contained, like a grub in an apple, a question no one would ever want to be asked; one that it would be terrible to consider even if you weren't required to answer it. p207

The human spirit is a powerful, powerful thing, and there's very little that it can't achieve, if it's out of spite. p166

[Andrew]

A very interesting story about how life slips you by and how you can (actually, in this case) wake up several years older having done nothing with your life.

This was not his best book but still an entertaining read with some downright hilarious moments. But I can't shake the feeling that a lot of the paragraphs were padded out to make up the word count.

[Catriona]

A book that started so well and ended, well, ended not quite soon enough for me.

I love Mil Millington and wanted to really like this book, but he seemed to give up about halfway through. There were a few genuinely funny moments in the first half but it did peter out quite dramatically towards the end.

All in all I did enjoy it, but nowhere near as much as I'd hoped I would.

[Moira]

The first part of the book was not, what I would call, riveting. But then I got into it and quite enjoyed it. It had a lot of description that could have been edited out, as I found myself skipping over a lot of it in the beginning. But it was like he finally got into the groove of the story and I found it far more interesting.

[Graham Austin]

I enjoyed this book. The book centres around a very interesting concept which makes for some very funny situations. The author is too keen to add his own witty observations on modern life, this can disrupt the flow of the book at times. Worth a quick read if you have a few hours to spare.

[Petra]

Saulustig! Die ersten zwei Drittel des Buches dachte ich, es sei außerdem komplett sinnfrei (aber es war mir egal, weil es einfach so spaßig war!), aber dann wird der Plot tatsächlich auch noch interessant und es gibt noch ein paar gute Erkenntnisse!

[Shawn Ambrose]

I've come to the conclusion that I need to read every single book, short story, and article Mil Milington has ever written. I actually hurt myself laughing a few times. He might even be funnier than Douglas Adams. I KNOW, RIGHT?

[Kathy]

This was a bit of fun and a totally different style of book to what I normally read. At times I felt it tried a bit too hard to be funny, particularly in the first half, with the result that it got a bit wearisome. But the story ended well and I enjoyed the characters.

[Julia]

Hilarious! I finished this on an airplane and was trying not to laugh out loud.

[Fiona]

Spooky how this guy goes to bed at 25 and wakes up at 43 with no memory of the intervening years. Feels like that to me sometimes too

[Pam]

Cute concept, but suffered from dense syntax and overcomplicated prose. I can usually get through that sort of style if the story moves along, but this one just wasn't engaging enough.

[Clare Coffey]

This book was very enjoyable to read. I liked the main character- Chris very much. The premise was excellent- time travel almost!