Funny Novels (recommend some)

[Led Souptin]

Anyone able to recommend some genuinely funny and good novels?

I really enjoyed Liam Williams' homes and experiences and, although they're not strictly novels (but they sort of read like novels) - Tim Key's both of his recent books about lockdown

Would love to hear some suggestions of other autors in a similar vein.

[Old Nehamkin]

Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story is about as funny as it's possible for a book to be I think (and it is a novel, despite appearing to be a memoir at first glance.)

[Deliciousbass]

Yeah, Based on a True Story is easily the funniest novel I've read. Highly highly recommend the audiobook.

I'm currently reading Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes which is also very funny. It's a self-styled 'fictionalised-memoir' (though apparently is near totally true) and follows the author drinking himself in and out of insane asylums. It's a great read so far. Silver Jews' David Berman was a big fan, but then so was Nick Hornby so, y'know, swings and roundabouts.

[Urinal Cake]

A House for Mr Biswas.

I found it funny and not funny in the way literati find things funny.

[Mister Six]

Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story is about as funny as it's possible for a book to be I think (and it is a novel, despite appearing to be a memoir at first glance.)

It's even better in audiobook form.

I read Douglas Adams's Last Chance to See for the first time a couple of years back, and he's obviously heavily rewriting all the encounters he has with real people, but since it makes for a properly hilarious book it's hard to hold it against him.

I remember the novelisations of the Biederbecke Trilogy by Alan Player having a good chuckle in each paragraph without seeming overbearing, which is bloody impressive.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I really loved Me Cheeta by James Lever, The Princess Bride by William Goldman and Hope - A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander, while I'm very fond of Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich, The Guy Under the Sheets by Chris Elliott and Wake Up, Sir by Jonathan Ames, but apart from Norm MacDonald's book and the two Alan Partridge novels I'm struggling to think of any other full length fiction books. There must be loads of others, and I've a long list of comedy dramas and a good few collections of short stories, but straight up comic fiction is something I've not seemed to track down.

[Led Souptin]

straight up comic fiction is something I've not seemed to track down.

Yes same! I would have thought there would be more (or must be) but I guess comedy in writing used to be snobbishly overlooked.

I did also enjoy John Swartzwelder's The Time Machine Did It, although the jokes are there, the plot is a bit underwhelming

Would like to know some authors that aren't comedy writers or comedians so I don't look like a big uncultured dum dum when I ask for them in Waterstones.

[Led Souptin]

I read Douglas Adams's Last Chance to See for the first time a couple of years back, and he's obviously heavily rewriting all the encounters he has with real people, but since it makes for a properly hilarious book it's hard to hold it against him

Forgot about Douglas Adams!!! I'll check that out

[kalowski]

Wodehouse. How a writer can make me laugh like that I don't know.

[13 schoolyards]

Yes same! I would have thought there would be more (or must be) but I guess comedy in writing used to be snobbishly overlooked.

Speaking from bitter experience here, but comedy writing in novel form is both a very tough sell and not something many people are really looking for - hence the (relative) lack of it on the shelves.

Basically, if you're going to do a comedy version of a genre, you'll be firmly told that the comedy will actually put off most fans of the genre so maybe leave it out. And if you're just writing a novel that's funny, "funny" is a very tough thing to market unless you're already a well known comedian, columnist or otherwise funny author. Most of whom can make loads more money being funny in other ways.

Plus unless it's hilarious chances are it's probably going to suck.

(sorry for the rant, please continue)

[Led Souptin]

Wodehouse. How a writer can make me laugh like that I don't know.

Is there a good starting point for a Wodehouse beginner?

[kalowski]

Is there a good starting point for a Wodehouse beginner?

Any of the Jeeves collections: Carry On, Jeeves or Very Good Jeeves.
Any Jeeves and Wooster really

[buttgammon]

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen is one of the funniest books I've read over the last few years. All of Cohen's books that I've read have been funny but the humour is particularly well-executed in this one, which goes from political satire to slapstick silliness, sometimes in the same sentence.

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is a book that takes some amount of commitment to read but it's very rewarding in terms of humour, a lot of which has stood the test of time very well. There's a wide span of humour in it too, from meta-jokes to toilet humour and some brilliantly done character-based comedy.

[Operty1]

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller i found funny, though there is darkness in both.

Also, Well-Remembered Days by Arthur Matthews and Then we came to the end by joshua ferris.

[Operty1]

Just remembered another - Lint by Steve Aylett

Has anyone read Harold by Steven Wright, am wondering how his persona translates to a book.

[13 schoolyards]

Can also recommend Lint, it was so funny I bought it twice.

I'm not sure it's a "funny" book exactly, but Jack Womack's Let's Put the Future Behind Us had a chapter describing a shonky mid-90s Russian plan for an American-themed amusement park that's one of the funniest things I've ever read.

[Mr Banlon]

The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey. Wonderfully stupid
Carl Hiaasen books are quite funny, if a bit boomer-y. (Liberal Boomer, not Trump Boomer)

[Vodkafone]

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. I laughed out loud several times, which is a rarity for fiction.

The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills was also very funny in a dark, dry way, unless my memory is playing tricks.

[buttgammon]

Martin Amis's Money is one of the most raucously funny books I've ever read. Like all the best satires, it has ideas and jokes that go far beyond its specific political landscape, and some great comedy names too (e.g. Spunk Davis).

[willbo]

there's a choose-your-own-path novel on kindle called Whatley Tupper done by two Canadian indie authors. I bought it ten years ago and I still think it's one of the funniest things I've ever read. It's about a middle aged, Phil Collins loving, college janitor who gets into all sorts of random time-travel/parallel-universe adventures after being pulled into a portal in a science lab.

There was another range of "choose your path" e-books called Choose-o-Matic, by a different author but released at the same time. They're about time travel, zombie breakouts and superheroes. I think both those series have some real laughs.

[Magnum Valentino]

I remember the first few chapters of Hugh Laurie's book The Gun Seller being really funny and then the rest being completely dreadful.

So not that I guess.

[sprocket]

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller i found funny, though there is darkness in both.

I second both of those, I also remember finding Raymond Chandler's Marlowe novels funny in places but it's a while since I read them.

[Operty1]

Can also recommend Lint, it was so funny I bought it twice.

The follow up was funny as well.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JDPKU3K/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i9

[Small Man Big Horse]

I remember the first few chapters of Hugh Laurie's book The Gun Seller being really funny and then the rest being completely dreadful.

So not that I guess.

That's how I remember it, but I know some people on here liked it.

[Blinder Data]

here are a few suggestions which are a bit more "novel" than "funny"

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth (filthy and often laugh-out-loud funny)
White Nosie - Don DeLillo (frequently amusing with brilliant dialogue)
The Sellout - Paul Beatty (biting racial satire)

there's another one i wanted to mention that i've forgotten the name of and it's annoying me. released in the 1990s and set in a kind of a post-acopalyptic suburban america where neighbourhoods are firing rockets at each other. i remember it as darkly humorous, slightly Pynchonesque. anyway - when i can remember its name - that one.

[Twonty Gostelow]

here are a few suggestions which are a bit more "novel" than "funny"

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth (filthy and often laugh-out-loud funny)
White Nosie - Don DeLillo (frequently amusing with brilliant dialogue)
The Sellout - Paul Beatty (biting racial satire)

there's another one i wanted to mention that i've forgotten the name of and it's annoying me. released in the 1990s and set in a kind of a post-acopalyptic suburban america where neighbourhoods are firing rockets at each other. i remember it as darkly humorous, slightly Pynchonesque. anyway - when i can remember its name - that one.

In a not dissimilar vein (Why not just say 'similarly'? - Because it's the Book Forum, okay?), Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris is an ironic and bleak, but not soulless, examination of office routine, and employee's lives/non-lives.
The reviews were excellent, but it seems some readers were disappointed that it wasn't much like The Office sitcoms.
  The only book I've read that's written in the first person plural too, I think.

[buttgammon]

There are some darker, but still very funny, choices from some of the more out-there writers of 60s/70s England. Ann Quin's Berg is a brilliantly executed black comedy about a man who goes to a grim seaside town to track down and kill his estranged father, getting into some strange misadventures in the process. Christie Mary's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson takes a more meta approach, looking at a young man who starts keeping accounts of the rights and wrongs in his life using bookkeeping methods and ends up taking matters into his own hands to balance the books. There's a particularly extraordinary bit where the protagonist gets into an argument with the author about how he's portrayed. Both of these books are short, punchy and very funny, despite their frequently grim subject matter.

[Angst in my Pants]

Joe Keenan (who used to write for Frasier) wrote three splendid novels that made me laugh a lot:
- Blue Heaven
- Putting on the Ritz
- My Lucky Star

I found the first to be the better of the three (and the funniest), but they're all grand.

I confess I have never read any P.G.Wodehouse, but reviews of Keenan's novels have suggested they have a similar style.

[Blinder Data]

there's another one i wanted to mention that i've forgotten the name of and it's annoying me. released in the 1990s and set in a kind of a post-acopalyptic suburban america where neighbourhoods are firing rockets at each other. i remember it as darkly humorous, slightly Pynchonesque. anyway - when i can remember its name - that one.

The book I was failing to remember the name of is... Elect Pete Robinson for a Better World by Donald Antrim.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart is another amusing book I enjoyed.

[13 schoolyards]

In a not dissimilar vein (Why not just say 'similarly'? - Because it's the Book Forum, okay?), Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris is an ironic and bleak, but not soulless, examination of office routine, and employee's lives/non-lives.
The reviews were excellent, but it seems some readers were disappointed that it wasn't much like The Office sitcoms.
  The only book I've read that's written in the first person plural too, I think.

Thank you for reminding me that I bought this (on the recommendation of NZ / Australian comedian Tony Martin) but am yet to get around to reading it. Probably should do that then