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Fine
To hear Paul Reverb tell it, he’s fine.
Sure, he’s been caught in a compromising situation by his window cleaner and failed to prevent daylight robbery, and yes, he no longer tells people he was born the day Sergeant Pepper was released, as, to his horror, people no longer know what a Sergeant Pepper is.
Fine.
But Paul isn’t fine. He hates his job and he’s not fond of his friends. He sits in his dead parents’ flat surrounded by his carefully curated, reassuringly warm vinyl, not writing the novel he’s not been writing for a decade. Paul is lonely to his bones and will likely stay that way until his dead body is found by his cleaner.
Will Paul Reverb ever find happiness? Will he even recognise it if he does? And who cares if a middle-aged man finds happiness anyway?
Fine is coarse. Fine is sad and sweet and crude and beautiful. Fine is scurrilously funny while making your bottom lip tremble. Fine is a rallying cry for growing old riotously, for not going gently and for not judging people by the state of their recycling bins.
Sure, he’s been caught in a compromising situation by his window cleaner and failed to prevent daylight robbery, and yes, he no longer tells people he was born the day Sergeant Pepper was released, as, to his horror, people no longer know what a Sergeant Pepper is.
Fine.
But Paul isn’t fine. He hates his job and he’s not fond of his friends. He sits in his dead parents’ flat surrounded by his carefully curated, reassuringly warm vinyl, not writing the novel he’s not been writing for a decade. Paul is lonely to his bones and will likely stay that way until his dead body is found by his cleaner.
Will Paul Reverb ever find happiness? Will he even recognise it if he does? And who cares if a middle-aged man finds happiness anyway?
Fine is coarse. Fine is sad and sweet and crude and beautiful. Fine is scurrilously funny while making your bottom lip tremble. Fine is a rallying cry for growing old riotously, for not going gently and for not judging people by the state of their recycling bins.
- GenresFiction
208 pages, Paperback
Published November 4, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 18, 2025
This is my first fiction book of 2025 and if the rest I read this year are half as good as this un then I’m gonna be in for a good one. I have previously read short pieces of work by Higgins and had a good laugh, when I saw his debut novel was out I jumped at the chance to read it and it doesn’t disappoint, it’s been a long time since a book has made me laugh this much. In fact I recently saw a discussion on one of the social media platforms recently asking the question “What book has made you laugh out loud the most?” I can say with 100% certainty that it is this beauty.
Our main character is Paul Reverb, great name, seems nice enough, a gentle well meaning person and what follows is a series of ridiculous events. Paul is lonely, tragically so it seems at times, nothing seems to go his way, in fact things seem to become sentient enough to make sure they don’t go his way, from buying a coffee, meeting mates in the pub or a nice quiet toss in the privacy of his own lounge, when Paul puts his mind on a task you soon learn to spot the incoming catastrophe. I felt so bad that I was laughing at his misfortune, at one time I actually told myself to stop laughing cos it’s mean. It doesn’t take long before Paul has got under your skin and you’re hoping that he somehow breaks the curse and gets a happy ending or at least a happy moment and as I started to run out of pages I was worrying that I may have to kidnap Higgins and do a Misery on him to get the ending I wanted.
One fun bit of this book was the nostalgia, I’m guessing I’m of a similar age to Paul because the music, TV and misc items from his past are all things I remember. Highlight moment was Paul listening to Tiny Tears by The Tindersticks, I listened to this so many times, had it on cassette and had to keep rewinding to find the start of the song. Paul is a legend for bringing this back to me.
Absolutely wonderful book, great characters, funniest writing ever and if you ever wanted to get into the head of a horny lonely man then this is the book for you.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2025...
Our main character is Paul Reverb, great name, seems nice enough, a gentle well meaning person and what follows is a series of ridiculous events. Paul is lonely, tragically so it seems at times, nothing seems to go his way, in fact things seem to become sentient enough to make sure they don’t go his way, from buying a coffee, meeting mates in the pub or a nice quiet toss in the privacy of his own lounge, when Paul puts his mind on a task you soon learn to spot the incoming catastrophe. I felt so bad that I was laughing at his misfortune, at one time I actually told myself to stop laughing cos it’s mean. It doesn’t take long before Paul has got under your skin and you’re hoping that he somehow breaks the curse and gets a happy ending or at least a happy moment and as I started to run out of pages I was worrying that I may have to kidnap Higgins and do a Misery on him to get the ending I wanted.
One fun bit of this book was the nostalgia, I’m guessing I’m of a similar age to Paul because the music, TV and misc items from his past are all things I remember. Highlight moment was Paul listening to Tiny Tears by The Tindersticks, I listened to this so many times, had it on cassette and had to keep rewinding to find the start of the song. Paul is a legend for bringing this back to me.
Absolutely wonderful book, great characters, funniest writing ever and if you ever wanted to get into the head of a horny lonely man then this is the book for you.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2025...
March 21, 2026
I'm trying to remember a time when I've read a book that's more absurdly funny than Fine, and I can't remember any, which officially makes Fine the funniest book I've read.
Paul Reverb is a middle-aged man in his 50s, he lives alone, his free time is filled with alcohol/self-pleasuring/music. I'm not part of the target demographic but I still found this tragicomedy of a novel highly entertaining.
The chapters are more fragments than cohesive units. Meaning that they go together but they exist for their own merit. They go together to fill out a full story but they do much better standing on their own, towards the end things seem to blend/flow together smoother but the beginning/middle parts take their own courses.
Case in point, these are my three favorite chapters, in order of appearance but not necessarily personal preference:
1. when he gets caught in an embarassing situation by the window cleaners
2. when he tries to walk outside to spite Neil and ends up sneezing because he never takes walks outside
3. when he rants about snow and goes viral on accident
"It broke me. I was alone. I was so alone. I had no one to share my lunacy with. I started to cry, and not just muted, snorting, banked down sobbing, but sudden, half-barked wailing, I howled with the ache and the sadness of it all. It rattled my body..."
Paul Reverb is a middle-aged man in his 50s, he lives alone, his free time is filled with alcohol/self-pleasuring/music. I'm not part of the target demographic but I still found this tragicomedy of a novel highly entertaining.
The chapters are more fragments than cohesive units. Meaning that they go together but they exist for their own merit. They go together to fill out a full story but they do much better standing on their own, towards the end things seem to blend/flow together smoother but the beginning/middle parts take their own courses.
Case in point, these are my three favorite chapters, in order of appearance but not necessarily personal preference:
1. when he gets caught in an embarassing situation by the window cleaners
2. when he tries to walk outside to spite Neil and ends up sneezing because he never takes walks outside
3. when he rants about snow and goes viral on accident
"It broke me. I was alone. I was so alone. I had no one to share my lunacy with. I started to cry, and not just muted, snorting, banked down sobbing, but sudden, half-barked wailing, I howled with the ache and the sadness of it all. It rattled my body..."
November 18, 2024
This is funny. It's really really funny. Fine
On reading a review in The New York Times no less, which deems John Patrick Higgins' FINE a "witty, tragicomic debut" I had to get a read. It's not Higgins's first or second turn in print but FINE is a proper shiny novel which only serves to allow bigger, better observations and set up longer better gags. "...he had small brown eyes, wet as apple pips. They appeared to be processing information about me. I sucked my stomach in." The novel is told by Paul Reverb, a middle aged writer trying his best in a world that seems to have set up special challenges just for him. Or is it Campbell's hero's journey, it might well be. It's thick with popular culture references with which we all ought to be familiar and difficulties encountered by all, like the slam of the off licence door when booze is thin at home or being caught out looking at niche but widely available websites. There's also a love interest but I'll leave it there for fear of spilling the beans. (This is not a reference to the earlier niche websites.) I hope there's a playlist and that all the chapter titles are lyrics from songs I know and want to know.
On reading a review in The New York Times no less, which deems John Patrick Higgins' FINE a "witty, tragicomic debut" I had to get a read. It's not Higgins's first or second turn in print but FINE is a proper shiny novel which only serves to allow bigger, better observations and set up longer better gags. "...he had small brown eyes, wet as apple pips. They appeared to be processing information about me. I sucked my stomach in." The novel is told by Paul Reverb, a middle aged writer trying his best in a world that seems to have set up special challenges just for him. Or is it Campbell's hero's journey, it might well be. It's thick with popular culture references with which we all ought to be familiar and difficulties encountered by all, like the slam of the off licence door when booze is thin at home or being caught out looking at niche but widely available websites. There's also a love interest but I'll leave it there for fear of spilling the beans. (This is not a reference to the earlier niche websites.) I hope there's a playlist and that all the chapter titles are lyrics from songs I know and want to know.
March 12, 2026
This was 3.5 stars for me. Enjoyable, but not without it's flaws.
There are a couple of things that seem worth mentioning:
First, this book won't be for everyone. You are inside the mind of 50s something white male who likes making observations about the world. It worked for me because I too am a 50s something white male and much of it resonated with me. It may not work so well for people in other demographics and some may even be turned off or mildly offended by some of it (though there's nothing too bad from memory).
Second, it's a little hard to get a handle on the book at the start. It seems like a series of disjointed standalone stories happening to the central character. Each one was interesting, but there didn't seem to be much of a central theme or arc going on. When I finished a chapter, I was quite happy to put it down for a few days rather than go immediately to the next chapter. That changed somewhere around the middle of the book when characters/storylines reappeared and things started to be more connected.
There were a few other minor annoyances for me, such as the character trending towards being too negative/helpless in parts - you know, where you get frustrated at them rather than sympathising with them - but I think on balance it stayed on the right side of that line. The end seemed slightly too easy for my liking (but wasn't terrible).
There was much to enjoy too. I'm always bad at describing the positives, so don't let the shortness of this section fool you. It was humorous, insightful at times and a good examination of a character, with the odd moving moment thrown in. I've read better, but I've definitely read worse too and I don't regret buying it or spending time on it.
If you're in the target audience demographic, buy it and stick with it, it's worth reading.
There are a couple of things that seem worth mentioning:
First, this book won't be for everyone. You are inside the mind of 50s something white male who likes making observations about the world. It worked for me because I too am a 50s something white male and much of it resonated with me. It may not work so well for people in other demographics and some may even be turned off or mildly offended by some of it (though there's nothing too bad from memory).
Second, it's a little hard to get a handle on the book at the start. It seems like a series of disjointed standalone stories happening to the central character. Each one was interesting, but there didn't seem to be much of a central theme or arc going on. When I finished a chapter, I was quite happy to put it down for a few days rather than go immediately to the next chapter. That changed somewhere around the middle of the book when characters/storylines reappeared and things started to be more connected.
There were a few other minor annoyances for me, such as the character trending towards being too negative/helpless in parts - you know, where you get frustrated at them rather than sympathising with them - but I think on balance it stayed on the right side of that line. The end seemed slightly too easy for my liking (but wasn't terrible).
There was much to enjoy too. I'm always bad at describing the positives, so don't let the shortness of this section fool you. It was humorous, insightful at times and a good examination of a character, with the odd moving moment thrown in. I've read better, but I've definitely read worse too and I don't regret buying it or spending time on it.
If you're in the target audience demographic, buy it and stick with it, it's worth reading.
April 6, 2025
Just brilliant. Proper laugh out loud. Not the ‘laugh out loud’ you see over-used in book reviews.
January 21, 2026
Absolutely Brilliant! Enjoyed the wonderful tone and extraordinarily crafted comedic cadence woven into Paul's 'ridiculous' life events .... such a great ending!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews