The Wall In The Head by Christopher Beanland

I have a dark sense of humour and am fond of the inappropriate laugh, like many I am no stranger to the loss of loved ones so I was looking forward to this read.  From the blurb it was right up my strasse,  Unfortunately, it does not live up to the publisher's hyperbole.  The writing felt confused and disjointed and I could not find any humour within it's pages at all, let alone any black humour.

Donald is suffering after his wife Belinda dies in a cycling accident.  So much so he tries to take the ultimate solution to his pain by taking a dive off the West Mids TV building, a Brutalist construction in the heart of Birmingham.  Somehow he doesn't manage it, a freak gust of wind (or supernatural intervention - it really isn't clear) blows him back on to the roof and so starts his tale.

The story is more or less split in to three separate timelines:

The story of his romance and relationship with Belinda.

Belinda's Top Ten Brutalist Buildings book excerpts (truly dire if you really dislike this particular form of architecture).

The story of Donald's working life as a writer for West Mids TV and the TV Stations inexorable decline.  Particularly the making of one last show based on Belinda's paeon to Brutalism.

The best bit about this book was that it finally ended - albeit with the words "This Is Not The End".  The second best bit was the sections dealing with the technicalities of filming a TV documentary on a shoestring budget.  From a deranged presenter (Baxter), upbeat Producer (Kate), taciturn Polish driver (Januscz) and the relentless Director (Bob) you get a sense of the inner workings of filming against time and within budget whilst staying in bizarre hotels and subsisting off Service Station "food".

I never really got a genuine sense of the characters beyond them being words on a page.  In fact Donald actually wonders how characters can come alive in a book as all he knows is writing for TV where the actors flesh out his characters with gestures and a third dimension.  Sadly, Donald was proved right that you can't always get a living and breathing character on to the page; Mr Beanland certainly didn't manage to.

So, we have a lack of characterisation and a meandering plot - this was never going to be one of my best reads.  Then throw in all the hearts and flowers stuff about Brutalism (and you really cannot get away from it, it infuses each and every page) and it completely bypassed my enjoyment switch.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA THE PIGEONHOLE.