Book Review - Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life

Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life
By Mil Millington

Paperback: 272 pages

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

ISBN-10: 029785125X

ISBN-13: 978-0297851257



Chris was in the middle of a snooker game but wakes up to find himself with a strange woman (not unusual in itself) in a strange house with no sign of his own clothes. He gradually realises that he’s been catapulted into the future, where he’s now 25 years older and a flabby alcoholic in the same job but with an impending divorce. Only one of his (former) friends believes him and he struggles to turn his current life around while attempting to regain his old one and the lost 25 years.

Did he really fall 25 years into the future? Or does he have alcoholic amnesia?

“Things my Girlfriend and I have Argued About”, Mil Millinton’s first book, was one of the funniest fictional non-fiction I’ve ever read. His second, “A Certain Chemistry” was a passable bloke-lit (but not as funny) and “Love and Other Near Death Experiences” was read in a fit of author-loyalty (and not funny at all). Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life is probably his second best, in my opinion. I did laugh a few times (most notably in the first three chapters).

Mr. Millington is an accomplished writer, but his wit often flounders on the altar of in-jokes. I suspect that I would have got even less out of this book had I not lived through the eighties and found myself middle aged while reading it. The story is clever and well written, but falls somewhere between humour and chick-lit (bloke-lit) without touching either shore.



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Mil’s webpage /

Interview with Mil HERE