The Hole Opportunity – Bronze Winner for Adult Fiction, Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2013 by James Minter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
*This book was supplied to me by the author for an honest review. This review was originally published on AudiobookReviewer.com.*
Somewhere in between the comedic styles of P.G. Wodehouse and Monty Python, author James Minter has paved his own comedic style. Minter’s The Hole Opportunity includes every kind of humor, from physical comedy to dry humor to plain silliness to satire to ridiculous misunderstandings. There’s something for every comedy lover in this book. Based on the seemingly crazy idea of “hole farming” as a career and business, the main characters go about trying to sell…holes. Disaster continually ensues in a variety of crazy and laughable ways.
Have you ever seen hole farming from the perspective of a rabbit? Ever wondered how one mans’ hole farming hopes can impact an entire village ranging from journalists’ careers to retired military majors’ reputations? This English satire answers all the questions you never wondered about and more, including what happens if a man gets caught buying nine pairs of stockings. These unusual happenings made the story all the more enjoyable.
You’ve heard of literary motifs. This book has comedic motifs. The same joke is referenced in multiple ways throughout the whole book. Sound boring? It was actually one of my favorite things about the book as it ended up feeling like an inside joke between the reader and the author that the characters were unaware of.
The only issues I had with this book were (1) one description used at least a couple of times that I didn’t understand (“She gave him an old-fashioned look”) and (2) especially toward the end of the book, a character would say something, but then the description afterwards would essentially repeat it. My job as an editor probably makes me more sensitive to the latter, and it’s possible that readers wouldn’t notice it so much, but that was too repetitive for me. Luckily it mostly happen in the last quarter of the book.
Pete Nottage’s voice talent really enhances the humorous experience. He knows just how to read dry humor lines to make sure the listener really gets it. His many accents are accurate and fun, and his talent is well suited for comedy. I would definitely listen to other audiobooks with him as the voice talent, and I would be interested to hear him perform drama.
The Hole Opportunity leaves a clear opening for the second book in the trilogy, and I can’t imagine how it will continue. Just about anything Minter writes will be a surprise – how can you guess what will happen next in a career like hole farming?