Megan F. Amram takes Henry Is Back rather more seriously than intended
I will admit I opened Henry Is Back expecting to have complicated feelings about a comedy novel humanising a monarch, and I did have complicated feelings, for about a chapter and a half, before the book itself got there first.
The trick of this novel is that it does not let Henry off easy just because he is now telling jokes for a living. His reincarnated stand-up persona is arrogant, entitled, and repeatedly gutted by a modern world that will not simply defer to him because of who he was born as, and the comedy comes directly from that friction. It is, whether intentionally or not, a pretty sharp bit about inherited power meeting a crowd that owes it nothing.
It is also, and I want to be clear about this, extremely funny. The corporate sponsorship chapter alone is worth the cover price.
I went in ready to write a certain kind of essay about this book. I ended up writing a much more enthusiastic one instead.
Ongoing material is at Henry VIII’s stand-up diary, and if you’re the type who likes your comedy with a spine, the novel delivers.
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