Facing the Facts 2 – A diary of a year in a relationship

I like reading diaries so I was drawn to The Diary of Two Nobodies by Giles Wood and Mary Killen which I thought would be a year in the lives of two ordinary people and which the cover asserts is a memoir of their relationship. At some point I bought this in a charity shop but, until I started looking through my shelves for books for this challenge, I did not know that I owned it and have no idea how long it has lingered, unread.

What I hadn’t realised, before I read the book, was that the authors are quite well known because they appear, or appeared, on a TV programme called Gogglebox. As I don’t watch TV (no time, too many books to read) I was not aware of them or the programme. To be fair, the TV thing didn’t intrude on the narrative but it probably explains how the book came to be published. Both the authors also write for newspapers and other publications, and Giles Wood is a painter.

The authors live in the Wiltshire countryside in a large cottage. They both work from home and their two daughters have grown up and moved away. Giles grows a lot and is involved in household maintenance, and Mary is more sociable and spends quite a lot of time at parties and events. They write about the year, what happens to them, how they feel about it, and their relationship. The two narratives alternate so we often see events from both points of view.

I did feel, very much, that this is a contrived book. I realise that any memoir or diary such as this will contain omissions and will fudge the truth a bit. The problem with this book, for me, is that I didn’t believe any of it at all. Giles presents himself as a grumpy man with no ambition who is uninterested in money and yet he has a successful career in a crowded field. They both claim poverty, yet they have a large house and often employ assistants. They state that they have out of date technology, which they can’t get to work, yet they both work from home. Apparently they argue a lot and Mary claims that she records their arguments and then types them out afterwards to review what has happened – I find this highly unlikely.

This book feels like it was contrived to present these two individuals in a certain way and to present a light-hearted and amusing tale of their life together for people who know them via the TV. It may be that I am mistaken but that is how the book felt to me. The authors seemed like characters in a book and not like real individuals. I read this book as fiction rather than fact.

I shall pass this book on to Oxfam for resale – it may be that it finds a fan of Gogglebox who will really enjoy it.