Pop Goes the Weasel by Stephen Osborne

[Ulysses]

Three stars is good for me. This was a fun book, and well written...
Stephen Osborne's "Pop Goes the Weasel" is fun. Quick witted and well written; fast paced and cleverly observed...it is a nod to the "bright young things" genre of the 1920s (like Wodehouse, et al).

Patrick Weasley is a feckless, spoiled gay party boy. He and his equally feckless friends get caught up in a country-house weekend that smacks of Philadelphia Story, but gayer and less glamorous (because no one, not even the rich, really know how to live that way any more, do they?).

I enjoyed and look forward to reading the sequel, "Rat Bastard." What will Weasel do next? And, significantly, will Tony still be with him?

My problem with this charming lark of a novel is that I really never got to like Weasel. As unpleasant as his right-wing Christian stepfather is, his dislike of Weasel is not without some foundation. Weasel, as narrator, tries to elicit our sympathies by recounting being bullied, being sent to a Christian school by Stepmonster, by being generally put-upon as an evolving gay adolescent. It doesn't quite work, because he is not just self-absorbed but vain and selfish. However, by the end of the book, I was beginning to have hopes for Weasel--and I'll just have to see if the sequel takes me there.