Book Review: STAY UP WITH HUGO BEST

Stay Up with Hugo Best
a review by Gordon Stamper, Jr.

Note: this is the first of, hopefully, many book reviews I'll post in this space, and I'll try to be the most spoiler-free reviewer around. 

With Erin Somers' Stay Up with Hugo Best, the reader will get a few surprises. One, it's an observant novel about a retiring late night host and famous comic, and the writing assistant who has had a lifetime crush on him. Two, with a few rare exceptions, the book is rarely funny.

The reader's narrative guide is June Bloom, who has just been laid off as a writing assistant from the long-running Stay Up with Hugo Best. The show has just wrapped up its finale and June makes a fateful decision to stop by a local comedy club and perform a stand-up routine to blow off steam. Unknown to her until post-set, Hugo Best, her former boss and comedy legend, was in the audience. He greets June and she is thrilled, even if she's a little sad due to the show's end and her unemployed status.

Hugo makes an impulsive suggestion--impulsive is what he's known for in his personal life--that she travels to his home in Connecticut and spends the weekend with him. Surprising herself in the time of #MeToo, June accepts his proposition and sets into motion a soul-searching time for both of them, evaluating both their friendships with others and how they have lived their lives.

If the latter part of the plot summary doesn't sound humorous, it's because it generally isn't. The plot is engaging and the character observations are detailed and poignant, but when any genuine humor appears on the pages, it's of the dark humor variety. Somers probably intended this paradox for readers, partly to emphasize Best's waning talent, but it did leave me to count how many times I actually laughed at a passage from the novel. It was six.

Along with the plotting, the strengths of the book are June's observations and remembrances from her life. The following is a sample, an incisive look at her old morning commute into New York City:

"Once on the train, the car would be so packed I'd end up in the very middle with nothing to hold on to, straining with my fingertips to steady myself on the ceiling while a businessman breathed deeply into my armpit. Kids would come by selling candy and telling made-up stories about their basketball team, but you absolutely could not buy from them. If you did, you opened the door to considering their lives, why they might be selling candy on the subway in the first place, and your own inability to help kids like them in any meaningful way. At that point, futility would overtake you." (Somers 195)

Somers is effective at describing the writers' meetings and drinking cool-down sessions at Friday's, along with the class separation between those behind the scenes and the celebrities they prop up. If you want a fast-paced book with rich characterization, Stay Up with Hugo Best is a recommended read. But don't expect your personal laugh track to be engaged.

Rating: *** out of ****.

Stay Up with Hugo Best, a novel by Erin Somers. Scribner, 2019.