Book review: Submarine

Submarine- Joe Dunthorne 

This isn't the sort of book I would usually go for but it was one of the choices for the Mirror Book Club and I thought I'd give it a go. I don't know why I ever decide to read coming-of-age novels. It definitely turns out that they're not my sort of thing!

Submarine is narrated by an eloquent, eccentric and rather self-absorbed teenager named Oliver. He discovers that his mum is having an affair and sets out to fix his parents' marriage, whilst dealing with his own love woes. 

Again, the narrator is ridiculously verbose for his age. It's starting to annoy me that so many books are narrated by teenagers with the vocabulary of a middle aged professor. He is such an unbelievable character, especially in terms of his actions. He takes a bus for an hour to break into the home of his mother's lover (what's the male term for mistress?) and curl up in his bed to wait for him to return after work. Who would actually do that?

The girls in the novel were also hard to relate to. Jordana, Oliver's girlfriend, gives off the impression of being a little simple and rough around the edges and yet she also has the odd eloquent moment. Then there's Zoe, the chubby-turned-slim girl who was bullied to the point of leaving school by Oliver and Jordana. The way she leads him on seems very simplistic and just leads her to become a very confusing character.

Ultimately, every character in the novel was unlikeable and the events were just unbelievable. An annoying book that just left me feeling irritated.