Review: Quirky humour
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 30, 2013
"The Village Idiots EBAY CLUB" by Charlie Bray is the first in his new Laugh Out Loud at Life series and concerns a bunch of very odd and idiotic e-bay users. Their inventive and original silly names are most likely their handles for their interactions on e-bay and their `club' has the nature of an AA meeting. Having read Bray's "Open House" I am amazed at his versatility to change the tone of his humour so easily.I am probably not experienced enough with e-bay myself to get all of the clever, sarcastic, ironic and laugh out loud jokes but from what I gather the items traded, the prices paid, the uselessness of some of them, the addiction, the bidding wars and the clever traders taking advantage of the `idiots' are all themes found in one way or another in this often hilarious and wonderfully absurd story. I found many parallels to other internet groups and forums that I use, so even if you like myself are not too familiar with e-bay, the principles and characters are very similar everywhere.In this regard the book is a great reflection on modern society as well. Our village idiots, avoided in public and ridiculed by their peers have now found a new forum on the internet where their extravagant, eccentric and weird qualities, habits and characteristics find a new and sometimes rather unsuspecting audience. Everyone can be someone on the internet, Bray gets them to meet in their club and you can see what can happen when they do.Bray has taken a great idea and with original imagination and sadly probably with quite a lot of material based on real experiences and characters has made this a very entertaining farce.