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Book Review: Can’t Stand Up For Sitting Down by Jo Brand

By Amazon, Books & Authors, History, ReviewsNo Comments
cant-stand-up-for-sitting-down-jo-brand-book-cover Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down is Jo Brand’s second autobiography following on from Look Back in Hunger. I really enjoyed Look Back in Hunger, so much so that I wrote a book review: Book Review: Look Back In Hunger by Jo Brand. I couldn’t wait to read Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down, so did it satisfy my expectations?

Brand starts with an author’s note stating that this book is more a collection of memoirs rather than a chronological writing of significant events in her life like Look Back in Hunger. The book is split into three distinct sections: Trying To Be Funny, Being Jo Brand and The Box.

Trying To Be Funny is about her comedy career but it felt really vague. I remembered how Brand wrote quite detailed accounts of her time as a Psychiatric Nurse in Look Back in Hunger, yet when writing about her more recent comedy career it lacked details.

Being Jo Brand is about her personal life. In this section Brand gives her opinions about what she likes; as well as writing about her labour political values, her family and friends and what it’s like “being clocked” – recognised by members of the public.

The Box is mainly about TV, Radio and Celebrities. Brand includes a chapter entitled “Writing This Effing Book” were she writes about the volume of words needed to complete this book. Reading this chapter made it click in my head, the word I wanted to describe how this book felt to me: strained. It felt as though Brand stretched out her autobiography to fit into a second book. I had high expectations for this book and unfortunately it didn’t quite meet them.

However the book does have funny and interesting chapters and is well worth a read, especially if you’ve read Look Back in Hunger, as it completes her story. Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down is available to buy on Amazon.

Blog soon,

Antony



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Book Review: Look Back In Hunger by Jo Brand

By Books & Authors, History, ReviewsNo Comments
look-back-in-hunger-jo-brand Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand was a Christmas gift to me from my friend Sye last year. As a big fan of Jo Brand I couldn’t wait to read it, finally finishing it about a month ago.

Jo’s use of witty chapter titles and writing as she would talk instantly engages the reader. Your hooked from page one, even though the subject is about motorways ones she loves and ones she doesn’t. The majority of the book focuses on her late teenage years and her early adult years before she became a TV comedian. Each chapter contains a truthful and witty story, including several about her time as a Psychiatric Nurse. It has several glossy photo pages, spaced throughout the book, so you can image what the then Jo would look like along with other important people in her life.

Although funny, cleaver and engaging I did feel that it was kept very superficial. Jo didn’t discuss life goals, or lovers or people and experiences that have helped shape her in the fabulous woman that she is. Indeed she states that there wasn’t one key reason she went in to stand up comedy. This was disappointing because all stand up comedians seem to have a reason, for acceptance from others through humour, because they were always that way – making people laugh, etc.

As I edged closer and closer to the end of the book, I started to realise that Jo wouldn’t be discussing how she got in to stand up and moved on in her TV career and I came to realise there would be another book. Overall I thought Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand was good light witty reading, that you could dip in and out of. It’s a good introduction to were Jo Brand came from. Her latest book, the second part in this autobiography is available to buy on Amazon as well: Can’t Stand Up For Sitting Down by Jo Brand.

Blog soon,

Antony

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