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Larry Brill grew up in San Jose, California with three goals: To become a broadcast journalist; to write a hit novel; and to pitch for a major league baseball team. Well, two out of three isn’t bad.
He spent 25 years as a television news anchor and reporter in four states, picking up numerous awards along the way. After leaving the business in 2000 to set up his own video and marketing consulting business, Larry penned his first novel, Live At Five, a gentle lampooning of the TV news business. His second novel The Patterer, carried that theme back in time, to imagine the hilarious possibilities of how today’s news clichés might look to a theater audience in 18th century London.
Larry is also a past winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest, an international tongue-in-cheek competition to intentionally write the WORST opening sentence to an imaginary novel, giving him a new goal: with two books published and inching towards the bestseller list, he’s set his sights on becoming the first author to officially go from worst to first.
Reviewed by Katelyn Hensel for Readers' Favorite
Holy Hilarity Batman! If you are looking for a rowdy romp around England, look no further than The Patterer by Larry Brill. From the very first page you are scandalized, embarrassed, laughing out loud, and (dare I say) intrigued. If you don't enjoy this book, well...you must have the sense of humor of a teaspoon because this book was EPIC.
Not sure what a patterer is? Well, neither was I...luckily the matter gets explained early on and we follow our newly-beloved Brit, Leeds Merriweather on his journey as a seller of newspapers...by shouting out the titles and stories in poetry form to attract the stubborn masses. But Leeds doesn't want to patter forever; he wants to actually write the stories he sells. Once he's been sacked by his good-for-nothing boss, he is free to start struggling to make it and avoid getting his stories stolen from said good-for-nothing boss. I loved Leeds. I thought he was a great character, very funny in an unrepentant, heathen kind of way.
I just LOVE the way that Larry Brill writes. It was a complex mix of hilarity and angst, and the plot was really cool and made me breeze through the book. There were some cute pop-culture references as well, such as Gilligan's Island, which were fun when I caught them, but wouldn't distract readers even if they were unfamiliar with the cultural references. My one complaint is that the book was entirely too short. The Patterer could have been another 200 pages long and I wouldn't have noticed because I would have been too immersed in the bliss of hilarity on each page. Get yourself a copy and enjoy yourself. I know I did!
