Married Alive

by Julie Burchill

Married Alive Burchill, Julie

Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit

213 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Julie Burchill is an English writer and columnist known for her provocative comments. Beginning as a writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She is a self-declared "militant feminist". She has several times been involved in legal action resulting from her work. She is also an author and novelist, her 1989 novel Ambition being a bestseller, and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush being adapted for television.

Reviews

[Tanis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a bit stumped by this book, I started off by not liking it very much at all, it all felt a bit try-hard and as if the author was so busy trying to be witty it killed what wit there was.

The main character, Nicole, is completely awful. She has literally no redeeming features at all, she's racist, sexist, manipulative, narcissistic, petty, nasty and really boring. Given all that I still read the book to the end and I think I enjoyed it. Its pretty bleak reading a book where the main character is so awful but then I realised that if you're not supposed to like her and just take her for what she is, horrendous, then its fascinating. Its like a short memoir of a sociopath.

I don't know if that's how your supposed to see her, but that's how I chose to read it, if I'd stayed with the attitude of thinking you're supposed to be on side with Nicole I don't think I would have finished it.

[Edmund Chattoe-Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ironically, given how hard she is on others, JB seems to have p**sed away much of her talent and now seems to write mostly the sort books people read in the loo. Fortunately this one is from the days when she could both still write and had something to say. I can't be bothered with the chronology but I wonder if this is one of the many books that she and her ex husband have written in a long proxy war to prove they are both desperately immature. Mainly, however, it is about roots and the fact you can never go back. The writing has a good dose of that Burchill sparkle and is pretty lively sexually. But I really hope the heroine is entirely invented or JB is something of a basket case. A decent read for Burchill fans and something that others might like to try as a kind of satanic chick lit (but Ambition is probably a better bet for the newbie.)

[Nicholas Beck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Completely over the top. Our Jules writes as if a team of comedy writers are urging her on to make every sentence a quip or one liner. Exhausting quite frankly but she does get in some good ones and some real groaners. So not much of a story here as our Jules details the break-up of a marriage and then comes down solidly at the climax with "marriage is shit and an anachronism in these here modern days." Maybe so Julie maybe so. Oddly for such a toss-off of a "novel", it was mostly a fun ride.

[Quartknee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a number of her essays and articles and I think the snarky, conversational narration works best for those formats. As fiction, it comes across as rather smarmy, scattered, and distracting. Too many asides and digressions without much in the way of plot to get me invested. I abandoned this book after ten pages.

[Danny Webster. · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5, rounded up for this cover (which my edition did not even have).

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very over the top; every couple of sentences I'd think "Oh come on!", but at the same time, I WAS laughing, and I did read it in a day, which is rare for me nowadays, even with such short books. So yeah, 4 stars definitely, and Julie Burchill's other books move up on my To Read-list.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed out loud on every page.

[Paul Brazill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comedy classic about the horrors of middle-class life.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Mind your feet. I can tell you've only just combed them." One of the funniest books I've read in ages.