Changes

|title=Hospital

|author=Toby Litt

|buy=Maybe

|borrow=Yes

|pages=528

|publisher=Hamish Hamilton Ltd

|date=April 2007

|isbn=978-0241142806

}}

I dreamed about Steve Coogan making a film of an unfilmable Toby Litt book called ''Hospital''. I really, really did. Hospital is um... Green Wing meets The Draughtsman's Contract meets The Towering Inferno meets Rosemary's Baby meets Owl's Creek Bridge. It's also probably a couple of hundred pages too long - hence, I imagine, my associating it with Tristram Shandy whilst asleep. And really, that should tell you all you need to know, which should also neatly get me out of the slight fix of having to review it. Because ''Hospital'' is one of those books where the reviewers come off either as being a miserable Victor Meldrew type or as a desperate-to-be-cool adolescent who can find more abstruse meanings (probably unintended by the author) than all the other desperate-to-be-cool adolescents added together. Plus one.

Please don't call the next one Ipecac, Mr Litt!

Those who like the idea of the skits in ''Hospital'' but prefer a nice, easy, straight read might enjoy Will Ferguson poking fun at the self-help industry in [[Happiness]] while those who are interested in what becomes of people without the safety of a moral framework might like J G Ballard's [[Empire of the Sun]]. Everybody else should just read ''Hospital'' twice instead!

{{amazontext|amazon=0241142806}}

{{commenthead}}

|name=John

|verb=said

}}

{{comment

|name=Jill

|verb=replied

}}