Review: How Not To Be a Boy

How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb
 
Genre: Autobiography
Page Length: 337 Pages
Publication Date: 31 August 2017
Publisher: Canongate Books
 
Stars:  5 out of 5
 
Link: AMAZON (UK)
 
ABOUT HOW NOT TO BE A BOY
 
RULES FOR BEING A MAN
Don't Cry;
Love Sport;
Play Rough;
Drink Beer;
 Don't Talk About Feelings
 
But Robert Webb has been wondering for some time now: are those rules actually any use? To anyone?
 
Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from losing his beloved mother to becoming a husband and father, Robert Webb considers the absurd expectations boys and men have thrust upon them at every stage of life.
 
Hilarious and heartbreaking, How Not To Be a Boy explores the relationships that made Robert who he is as a man, the lessons we learn as sons and daughters, and the understanding that sometimes you aren't the Luke Skywalker of your life - you're actually Darth Vader.

My Review:

I don't read many autobiographies and I'm reminded of a quote from PD James “All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.”
 
I enjoy Robert Webb's work on television and an ardent fan of everything Mitchell & Webb. I was interested in reading this book but not chomping at the bit. As I started it a few months ago, and then got distracted with something else and only just returned to it having forgotten what I had read and had to start from the beginning again. 
 
This book is so gorgeous, it's raw and honest, and warm and sweet, and it goes without saying – funny, but it's deeper than that – it's as if we're allowed into his inner neurosis, the small voice we keep hidden from others, helped along through excruciating teenage diary entries.  
 
There is a feeling that the young Robert Webb that is portrayed is genuine. It is also such a brilliant account of how confusing it must be to be a modern man with expectations of such dense masculinity.
 
I am in awe of his writing and wonder if there is a budding novelist in Webb about to be unleashed – something I would heartily welcome.
 
And it's changed my mind about reading autobiographies.
 
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED