The Book, the Film, the T-shirt - Matt Beaumont

Having thoroughly enjoyed “E”, the debut novel from Matt Beaumont and been quite amused by the horribly obvious cash-in follow-up that was “The E Before Christmas”, I was delighted to see a new novel from the author.

As much as anything, I’d been impressed by the way “E” and its companion were completely written in E-Mails, with date headers and everything. That originality, combined with the fact that it was also a pretty funny book, ...
...with his debut novel “e”, the story is set around life at an advertising agency. This time, though, rather than the setting being in the office, they’re at a film studio in Hounslow, in the middle of shooting an advertisement. In an effort to make it as good as they can and increase the agency’s profile, they’ve hired two of the biggest stars of American TV to play a couple. Unfortunately, in between signing to film the advert and coming to film ... more

Having thoroughly enjoyed “E”, the debut novel from Matt Beaumont and been quite amused by the horribly obvious cash-in follow-up that was “The E Before Christmas”, I was delighted to see a new novel from the author.

As much as anything, I’d been impressed by the way “E” and its companion were completely written in E-Mails, with date headers and everything. That originality, combined with the fact that it was also a pretty funny book, made Matt Beaumont one to watch. As much to see how he could possibly follow up something so unique.

As with his debut novel “e”, the story is set around life at an advertising agency. This time, though, rather than the setting being in the office, they’re at a film studio in Hounslow, in the middle of shooting an advertisement. In an effort to make it as good as they can and increase the agency’s profile, they’ve hired two of the biggest stars of American TV to play a couple. Unfortunately, in between signing to film the advert and coming to film it, they’ve had a rather nasty break up and things between them really aren’t going terribly well.

Things aren’t going so well for the agency boss, Greg Fuller, either. His wife is six months pregnant, his mistress is demanding more commitment from him and he’s having trouble in the office – trying to reverse a rash decision to sack a couple of staff so the agency doesn’t lose their biggest client just as a takeover bid is being prepared that would make Greg a very rich man.

Of course, the filming of the advert isn’t going to go smoothly, either. It’s not even started before it hits trouble, with one of the stars being arrested at Heathrow Airport. The other is making ridiculously overblown demands, costing a lot of money and even more in effort to resolve. The Marketing Manager from the company the advert is for wants to be more involved than he is, and the director keeps throwing his toys out and threatening to quit.

Of course, this is just a snippet of what’s going on, but it continues in much the same way throughout the whole novel. There doesn’t seem to be a single person in the whole cast of characters, from the lowliest runner to the Director, who doesn’t have some kind of trauma going on at some point. The whole shoot seems to be governed by Murphy’s Law and anything you can think of that could possibly go wrong goes completely wrong. Unfortunately for the people involved, and to the joy of the reader, Murphy doesn’t let up for a second.

Although I’ve criticised certain novels in the past for being too far away from the reality they’re trying to describe, this very same is the whole point here. Never having worked in advertising or in film, I have no idea if any of the situations mentioned throughout the story could actually happen for real. I suspect that any of them could, but that it would have to be a strange chain of events that caused all of them to happen in as short a space of time as the period covered my this novel.

And this is what makes “The Book, the Film, the T-Shirt” as funny and as much fun as it is. The story follows the characters as they bound from disaster to disaster and although you end up reading with a sense of amazement and disbelief, this is frequently interrupted by the sound of laughter. More often than not, your own.

The style the novel is written in helps this along. Beaumont has worked away from the E-Mail based style he used in his earlier works into something a little more flowing. It’s written in an almost documentary style, with different characters all getting a say, from a few lines to a few paragraphs in a go. It’s a little like Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees’ style in “Come Together”; except that there are more characters and the segments are shorter. The end result here is almost a little like “The Office” television series; in that the perspective keeps changing and you get to see different people’s views on the same event. The only difference is that the characters are describing the action, rather than having it acted out, but it’s not too great a leap to visualise some of the scenes, as they are described very well, for the most part.

Again very much in the style of “The Office”, every character seems to have his own style of description, and everyone is putting their own spin on events, usually for the sake of their own ego. What seems like incompetence to one is “pushing the envelope” to another and a demand that seems unreasonable to most people can be justified by the person making it. Part of the amusement in the novel is seeing how the contrasting characters deal with the same situation, especially when the contrast between them is at its’ greatest, such as between the posh Producer and the down to earth caterer, for example. Of course, it helps that the situations themselves are pretty funny to start with.

It’s not all laugh out loud humour, though. Some of the jokes are a little puerile (calling the advertising agency Fuller Scheidt probably being the worst offender here) and some of them do seem a little forced, even if you have managed to suspend your disbelief. The ultimate ending is a little predictable, for the most part (although with one notable exception) and not terribly funny. It feels a little like Beaumont knew he had to end the novel in a certain way, but had run out of funny and original ideas to do it with.

As a rule, though, this is a pretty funny book, if a bit of a “no brainer” in as much as a book can be. It’s not likely to stretch the imagination but if you go in prepared to suspend disbelief and take a step away from reality; you’ll most likely have a lot of fun within the pages.

You can find “The Book, The Film, The T-Shirt” on Amazon for £5.59, which is pretty good value against an RRP of £6.99. Even better, I saw a copy on Greenmetropolis.com for only £3.75 including postage, which is superb value and there are copies available on the Amazon Marketplace going from £1.00 for a brand new copy and less than this for a second hand version. If you like humour in your reading material, an offer like this should be snatched up immediately if you happen to see it. 

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