Degree of Exposure

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Degree of Exposure

Category:	Fiction
Author:	Eric Newman
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Price:	£13.49
ISBN:	978-1434316-110
Pages:	366
Reviewed in issue:	8

Taking a creative writing course, Jack starts work on a comic piece. He finds it expanding into a full-blown novel – with the added bonus of being able to cast beautiful, fellow-student Janice as its heroine – purely with the ulterior motive of worming his way into her affections (as he might euphemistically call them).

Taking the autobiographical edge off central character “Ken”, Jack sets the book in the early 1970s – which permits twists that wouldn’t work in these days of reliable electrics, H&S inspectors, ATMs and mobile phones.

Not quite hitting the blurb-quoted Tom Sharpe benchmark, Newman is certainly in the game. Jack’s novel is a witty, well-observed farce of human deceit and ambition – shared equally among the despicable and the almost-lovable characters of his seaside resort, Town Hall and Local Education Authorities. His professors are possibly either borrowed from Sharpe, or else kidnapped from his own days at the Open University. Not so much extremely wicked as wickedly extreme!

The ‘writing class’ and back story of Jack & Janice could have been dispensed with. Their only function seems to be to excuse any weakness in the writing of the main plot, and any sensible editor would have immediately cut the unnecessary diversions of the tutor’s short story and the unfortunate demise of an otherwise unimportant classmate.

Padding aside, Newman has produced an easy-reading piece of nonsense: quite amusing in places, well-structured enough to make you want to know how it will resolve itself, and providing one or two genuine laughs-out-loud.

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