I’m quite partial to protagonists who unravel in the most spectacular ways, and with ‘Dad Had a Bad Day’, Ashton Politanoff has given us a real doozy in the shape of Ned. Ned has recently lost his job and spends much of his time looking after his six-year-old son while his wife is at work. After watching a tennis game between a teenager and the teen’s father in the local park one day, Ned feels inspired to dig out his old Slazenger racket and join the local club. He keeps this news hidden from his wife, along with the fact that he’s whacking all the fees on a recently purloined credit card. Ned played to a high standard when he was younger, and he soon finds himself captaining the club’s team and organising matches against other clubs. But his bid to reclaim a lost sense of self soon spirals into something darker, and his all-consuming obsession sees him neglecting what should be the truly important things in his life—not least his son’s welfare. With a narrative that thrums with a kinetic, propulsive energy, and written with a prose style that’s as taut as a Wimbledon net and as punchy as a Roger Federer drop-shot, ‘Dad Had a Bad Day’ neatly balances the wincingly funny and the cringingly traumatic with dashing aplomb. And as explorations of contemporary masculinity and midlife disillusionment go, it’s a novel that serves up so much fun. RM

Published by Daunt Books