Customer Reviews
Hilarious! - By: helpful, 15 Jan 2008 
I honestly never knoew that such an old book could be so hilarious! It's writtenin such a brilliant way that you can "see" it all happening - it very vivid. I think they should do a film of this! One of the best books I have read for a long time!
Fantastic! - By: L. Spurling, 08 Sep 2007 This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I wish another one would have been written! I always read it when I feel a bit downhearted. A great insight into the life of peoplein those times - & how little has changed with regard to a son's attitude to his Dad!!! It was totally my sense of humour.
A delightful story - By: Philippe Horak, 05 Jul 2007 This diary is both a comic masterpiece & an accurate account of lower-middle-class life, attitudes & aspirationsin the late 1880sin London. It is a topical work because it reflects the period at which it was written & it actively makes play with small distinctions of taste & fashionin relation to clothes, social forms, furnishings & décor, shops, slang, transport or popular song.
The limiting factorin "The Diary" is the character of the diarist because Mr Pooter is a Nobody even to his own eyes & this very fact is the reason for the existence of his journal. It is interesting that despite these two aspects - a comedy centred on a nonentity - the book has become a classic & is still widely enjoyed by contemporary readers.
Mr Pooter is a figure of fun, nervous, respectable, sometimes pompous & often the subject of trivial mortifications. The story assumes that Pooter's small gaffesin social know-how or taste can be found everywhere on the social scale so thatin a sense we are all more or less Pooters because we make our own mistakes.
Pooter is perhaps a "nobody"in social terms but he has a full human status. Being fallible he is laughable but so, the authors imply, are the rest of us. If we can identify with this "nobody" the question inevitably comes up whether there can indeed be such a person as a "somebody"!
Weedon Grossmith's illustrations are not only funny to look at, they confirm George Grossmith's hints & help us imagine. For example the illustrations of Pooter & Lupin perfectly show the connection & disconnection between father & son.
The Wordsworth Classics edition features a valuable introduction by Michael Irwin with interesting interpretative views of the novel.
This book is beautifully read by Martin Clifton for Librivox.org & is ideal for readers who like to listen to the story as they read along.
David Brent...100 years ago - By: Mr. P. Craig, 17 May 2007 
Light & funny, this book actually made me laugh out loud several times. It's how I'd imagine David Brent to be 100 years ago--not so embarrassing, but endearingly slow-witted & desperate to climb the social ladder.
I can understand why some people might find it a little dated, but it's certainly worth a gamble at less than two quid!
Hilarious! - By: CriticalThinker, 30 Apr 2007 I came across this perchance; it seemed interesting so I picked it up. I read it allin one go because I couldn't put it down, the humour was brilliant. The thing I love about Mr. Pooter is that we all know someone like him. He's not a bad sort but has social aspirations, likes to think highly of his own situation & is jealous of anyone that he feels shouldn't be on the same social footing as he is. Yet despite all this he's lovable. His entries were really comical; he's constantly felled by disaster followed by disaster. His servants cheat him, his grocer, laundrette etc. all "take the mick" out of him & mess up his orders; they none of them take him seriously & ensure he knows it. Some of his early entries had me laughing, he had planted some seeds & every dayin the early entries he comments on the fact that nothing has come up yet. He reminds of an impatient child always grasping for attention & it's his childlike behaviour which I think is so appealing about the novel.
It's also a really easy read, if you've decided to take a sabbatical from wordy/lengthy/thinking novels; this is definitely the novel for you. It's also great as a way to kill time.
