The Unfinished Harauld Hughes

by Richard Ayoade

Richard Ayoade's fictional quest to rescue Harauld Hughes - the almost mythical mid-century playwright - from obscurity.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.

Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes's final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the most furious British writer since the Boer War.

This is the story of the story of that quest.

Genres: Fiction, Comedy, Humor, Audiobook, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 2024

About the author

Richard Ellef Ayoade is a British comedian, film director, screenwriter, television presenter, actor, and author best known for his role as the socially awkward IT technician Maurice Moss in Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd, for which he won the 2014 BAFTA for Best Male Comedy Performance.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not a big ‘books by comedians’ person, and may be an outlier in picking this up having not read any of Ayoade’s others, although I like him as an actor and presenter. I just found the premise – Ayoade sets out to make a documentary about an enigmatic (fictitious) playwright – impossible to resist. It’s daft but well-written, wry rather than laugh-out-loud funny. I loved the format, which includes interviews, article excerpts and dialogue from Hughes’ gnomic plays alongside a narrative of the documentary’s inevitable collapse into chaos. I had fun!

[Tom Mooney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, strange, and largely pointless. Kudos to Ayoade because this must have taken so much time and effort to construct (he's also publishing much of the fictional Hughes's work, I assume all written by himself).

[Emily B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable and unlike anything else I have read

[Miles Isham · Rating 3 out of 5]

My goodwill towards Richard Ayoade is enormous, he’s one of my favourite people. I really like the cover of this book. The inside bits not so much. Which is not to say that it isn’t well written or that there aren’t a couple of laughs, it just feels like Ayoade would rather have given us a serious book but chickened out. There were lengthy sections of this where I forgot it was supposed to be satirical. There were also lengthy sections where I forgot which character was talking. I think it’s time for Richard to move on and say what he really wants to say and this isn’t it.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great, crazy idea for fans of Richard Ayoade's style. The audio book is read by him and others (like Steve Merchant and David Mitchell) so it is even more entertaining.

If you have never read him, do not start with this book. It will make no sense why this is actually funny.

[autumn ☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i love richard ayoade but this was a little mid i fear

[Philippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is a slightly odd concept. but, to paraphrase a conversation between the director and the author,

— Who would read a book about a fake documentary, let alone an unfinished fake documentary about an author who is not real?

— I would!



so, in a nutshell, it was very enjoyable. I really like Richard Ayoade's humour, and I think his skills as a writer and director really pull this together. he manages to balance comedy with intrigue across a range of mediums. each character is carefully constructed and unique, with great dry humour. admittedly, when I somehow missed the memo for the first 50 odd pages about both the documentary and Harauld Hughes being fabricated, but if anything that probably added to the conceptual chaos of it all.

also, i don't care if she's not real: lady Lovilocke is my new icon.

she was, as she put it, a woman with a title, idyllic estate, wealth, a thriving career and a wealthy older husband with deep pockets and rapidly declining wealth.

she also manages to correct Haraulds grammar after he confesses his love ("you're the only attractive woman I've met who I couldn't crush intellectually " "it's not who, harauld, its whom") and has many a great quote ("I think worrying about money is a way of rejecting the present and, of course, god")

[libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

potentially the most extra book to ever be written

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely pointless and absurd. I loved it.

[Sami · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. i need to press richard ayoade between two microscope slides and study him for hours. made me laugh out loud on the train multiple times. and surprisingly touching in places.

[Debbi Barton · Rating 3 out of 5]

One word- BONKERS

[Chandru · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF
Could see this maybe working well in an Extras / Office type mockumentary but did not work great here. Felt like it was trying to legitimise the source material so much it became a very bland affair and really wasn’t many funny parts.
Gave up around the halfway mark but lost interest a lot earlier

[Svea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the audio book for this, 75% because it features music by Alex Turner and 25% because I've read Richard Ayoade before and enjoyed his style. I think I prefer him on TV or in written form though, because while the audio production was good, I found myself drifting off a few times. Overall a cool and fun and nice experience though!

[ollie pulsford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre, fun, I was grinning whilst reading a lot of this. A book, partially written as a play, about a playwright/screenwriter attempting to unearth the unfinished screenplay of a fictitious playwright/screenwriter. Somewhat pointless but nevertheless enjoyable. A few really great lines and quirky characters push it from a 3 to a 4.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Richard Ayoade and this book did not disappoint. Maybe not as funny as his other books but the concept is amazing.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often found myself laughing out loud—sometimes having to stop and take a rest—thanks to the well-placed, deadpan humor. Just what I needed.

[Francis Pellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the star studded audiobook which got me through the sections when I didn’t catch the allusions. clever and playful. It was good fun.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up solely for the concept of this book. I loved the idea of what this could be, and I love the world both within and without the physical book itself that Ayoade has created. But alas… writing fiction or a novel is not this man’s strength. There were times where you could hear his voice and humour which was nice, but mostly this was just a painful flat ramble with no character depth, a really dull plot, and a poorly executed idea. So much potential led to so much disappointment.

[Libby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book club book…. I spent the first half thinking it was non fiction and not being interested because I hadn’t heard of Harauld Hughes. Then I realised it was fiction and wasn’t interested because it was so overdone and waffle-y. Didn’t know how it was supposed to be funny. Had to read quick to avoid a reading slump

[Mr Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great read. And not really that funny either frustratingly.

[Paul Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I AM GOBSMACKED, to use a British phrase, that the typically staid New York Review of Books let Richard Ayoade write a first-person appreciation (as the fictional "Chloë Clifton-Wright") of the British playwright and screenwriter Harauld Hughes (also fictional). I imagine this is the NYRB's indirect way of endorsing Ayoade's The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, a novel that masquerades as a journal about the making of a documentary film about Hughes. "Clifton-Wright" dismisses The Unfinished Harauld Hughes in a curt footnote.

Not only has the august NYRB been persuaded to participate in Ayoade's guerrilla campaign of creating an aura of reality around his fictional playwright and screenwriter, but the just as august Faber and Faber publishing house has been so persuaded as well, for they agreed to place ads for Harauld Hughes's (fictional) books on the back cover and back pages of Ayoade's novel.

The novel does not quite match the ingenuity of the guerrilla campaign, in my opinion, but is nonetheless hilarious and entertaining in a Waugh-ian vein. Ayoade, as the planned documentary's presenter, drags the filmmaking crew from one interviewee to another, each more prickly and uncooperative than the last. The El Dorado of the documentary is to figure out what Hughes's final, unfilmed screenplay, O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, was about, but just as Ayoade is winning near the goal...well, no spoilers.

Ayoade seems to be a well-known and popular television presence in the UK, which means we might start seeing more of him here. I hope it works out better than it did with Russell Brand. Judging from novel, it is bound to do so.

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

the parody of pastiche, and once u drop a philip larkin glasses mention and a brecht joke, i’m in. is O Bedlam! O Bedlam! a Faulkner joke? i don’t know for certain but i’m ashamed to say i’m laughing, vigorously.

and as the loudest mid-century playwright since the boer war is quoted, “How can you be certain you're not doing the very thing you claim to be deconstructing? I mean, can you satirise nudity by showing nudity?”, Ayoade (soon to be my second husband although he doesn’t know it yet) reveals some uncertainty in his own career and its meaning and i love him for it.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was bloody brilliant!! if your a fan of the werid and Obscure and a fan of the Darkplace then you will really enjoy this one! Also I highly recommend the audiobook as it's done in the form of documentary time so different voice actors and it just brings the story alive more!

[Vicki Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weirdly absorbing but I wish the ending was better - the story just petered out to nothing.

[Morgan Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niche, but for me a hilarious time.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what you'd expect from a book about filmmaking from Richard Ayoade. Highly recommend the full-cast audiobook.

[Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Ayoade on Ayoade and also Ayoade on Top, but didn't like The Grip of Film and this book is much closer to Grip than his other books.

The concept is great but its execution is flat and uninteresting. The choice of interviewing a fictional author is fine but the amount of lore around it is suprisingly dense and hard to keep up. His best books have been laugh a page but there will be pages of 'lore' around Harauld Hughes and its not interesting enough to care. I don't think it's as bad as Grip but i'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it.

I clocked out around 100 pages in, or just over half-way. The fact the book is this short and yet feels like a chore to read is a huge warning sign.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book after seeing Ayoade promote this at an Off The Shelf event in Sheffield. The premise is so bizarre and the amount of work that must have gone into all the fictional works of Haurauld is incredible. However the story just didn’t quite capture me, nor did the comedy. A weird book that I don’t regret reading but didn’t really do it for me sadly.

[Simon Heldreich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very clever, very well written and really well put together, but not nearly half as funny as it thinks it is. It's too subtle in it's parody so that is not immediately obvious that it even IS a parody.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm normally disappointed when celebrity fiction gets published, but this is the sort of thing that would only get commissioned on the basis that the author can generate interest. It is a fictional documentary about a fictional playwright, and it is similar to the Alan Partridge books in that they are comedic pieces that work both as parodies and comedic works in themselves.

However, it merely has its moments rather than sustaining laughs from beginning to end. The silliness of documentary filming at the start is very strong, but I felt that was where it peaked. There is the odd phrase here and there that is funny but the last third of the book really feels like filler to reach a conclusion, and the book isn't that long.

Unlike the Partridge autobiography this didn't have any original material to work from, and it must have been difficult to judge whether the source material should be played for laughs, or the documentary process itself. Both were attempted but it was difficult to know to what extent the silliness of pretension was well-observed, or just general wankiness - I'm not really familiar enough with the minutiae. However I found it to be like football parodies, the first cliche-ridden answer is amusing but the returns diminish very quickly.

It was a shame the book tailed off as the jokes came from many different angles, whether that was the playwright's backstory, the contradictions of the characters or the spoofing of critical analysis. But it needs to be funny to be worth reading and the latter parts just didn't have the same punch as some of the earlier chapters.