BOOK REVIEW: Peggy & Me by Miranda Hart

BOOK REVIEW: Peggy & Me by Miranda Hart

Hachette Australia
October 2016
Paperback, $35.00
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

6/10

Fans of Miranda Hart revel in her quirky, slightly eccentric, and very, very funny Britishness, and here she makes a second pass at writing a memoir of her life with shih tzu/bichon frise cross puppy (a mixture she labels a Shitty Frise) Peggy.

Second pass? Yes – she explains at length how she finally finished writing the book a year or so earlier, only to have her laptop stolen, and without having made any backups of her work.

Hart’s humour shares the spotlight here with her voyage of self-discovery that occurred when Peggy chose her, and laughs are to be enjoyed as we hear how she had to adapt her life to fit in the new adoptee.

Unfortunately Hart’s source material isn’t strong enough to engage for 292 pages: in fact things start getting dull about a quarter of the way through, and by halfway we were skimming pages more often than not, trying to leap over patches of self-indulgent padding.

Fans after more heartwarming and less gripping tales may well enjoy Peggy & Me, but this reviewer found it insufficiently engaging by half – a sentiment unfortunately seconded by my wife, who is a considerably more ardent fan of Miranda’s work.

Category: Book Reviews