Up A Tree In The Park At Night With A Hedgehog
By P. Robert Smith

It is an art really. Coming up with snappy titles and attractive cover graphics to entice the unsuspecting consumer into parting with his cash.
So we have Up A Tree In The Park At Night With A Hedgehog, which seems to promise madcap humour, or at the very least, an interesting account of how things lead to the titular situation. No such luck.
A more accurate title would be Up The Creek With A Self-absorbed Two-timing Scumbag, but that is probably the wrong approach to landing a book on the bestseller charts.
Benton Kirby is dating Cassie and is having an affair with Cherry, his Korean student. Somewhere in his past is a fiancee, Georgia, who dies in a freak accident after losing her keys on her hen night.
Up A Tree is P. Robert Smith’s debut work and he seems to think that stringing together what he imagines are hilarious scenarios add up to a novel.
At least Georgia’s death is edged with black humour. Elsewhere, Smith is content to recycle not very funny anecdotes for no apparent purpose other than to recount them.
Things get really dire when he attempts the comedy of humiliation popularised in movies such as There’s Something About Mary (1998) by the Farrelly brothers.
When a piece of “souvlaki-sized turd” stubbornly refuses to be flushed away, Benton feels the urge to cover up by squirrelling the offensive evidence away in his pocket. Right. Sure.
How someone like him is able to attract a succession of women is an absolute mystery. This is something that Benton himself questions, marvelling at his ability to land “the kind of catch that you want to both eat and mount”.
And Smith’s description is the kind of writing that is both crass and repulsive. Give this artless offering a wide berth.

Try this instead: Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (2007, $18.95, major bookstores). For a portrait of people behaving badly that illuminates rather than infuriates, turn to this seminal tale about youthful excesses.
(ST)