Reviews for Mr. Toppit

The average rating for Mr. Toppit based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-06-06 00:00:00 Ryan Silva I wouldn't exactly say this book had me gripped, and yet somehow I was interested enough to get through the whole thing in a few days, so clearly, it had something. It's written in a witty, enjoyable tone, with lots of dry humour, memorable descriptions and fun cultural references. The plot provided constant surprises - the story turned out to be totally different from what I initially expected. However, I found the characterisation troubling and inconsistent; some of the characters are mere caricatures, others almost totally unbelievable. I particularly struggled with Laurie - at times she seems virtually insane, so I find it hard to accept that she would later become a successful TV chat show host without so much as a hitch. I was also frustrated that the nature of her obsession with Arthur and the Hayseed books was never really explained. Overall, an engaging but flawed debut.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-12-06 00:00:00 David Popiak The author was literary agent to AA Milne's estate, and he says he wrote this to ponder what would have happened to the real Christopher Robin if he'd grown up in the time of Harry Potter and tabloid fame. As a young boy, Luke is depicted in his troubled father's obscure series of English children's books, and finds unwanted fame when his father's accidental death and the scheming of an obsessed admirer from California catapult the books to Potteresque fame over a period of years. As someone who's written about the arts as a journalist my entire career, I've always been interested in the unintended consequences of fame - the odd, unpredictable intersection of public and private life. (There's a lot of that sort of dark comedy in my novel about a failing singer-songwriter, "Mirror Ball Man.") Luke is a sympathetic teen, and the novel's opening was particularly effective in establishing the magic of his father's books. There are a bunch of similarities here to another novel in the same vein, "The Funnies" by J. Robert Lennon. That's about Tim, the slacker son of a popular cartoonist who dies - the cartoon is a barely veiled version of "Family Circus," and the novel is mostly about Tim confronting the gap between reality and cartoon as he prepares to take over his father's franchise. In both novels there are also siblings left out of father's art - Luke's angry sister, Tim's mentally disturbed brother - and the father's inner darkness is the mystery hanging over the story. In each an obsessive fandom is a big factor in moving the story forward. I think Lennon's book was perhaps better, although overlong, because the work of art in question kept giving off meaning throughout the book.