Is comedy more important than kindness? Is meanness towards those closest to you necessary for quality humour? Is a poem about a Jacob Reece Mogg-like character masturbating a cat really that funny? I think the answer to each of those questions is no. The collection, beautifully designed by Emily Juniper, may draw on such tropes as clapping for the NHS or obsessing about sourdough starter without ever seeming trite or overfamiliar.

He Used Thought as a Wife, by Tim Key, review: pithily funny

Having a knowledge of Key and his actual life/friends helps contextualise the conversations, and it is easy to work out who some of the veiled characters are - but beyond that the character that TK paints is fascinating, and the reader is left wondering to what extent the actual Tim Key resembles his self portrait. [Something that his Megadate show also left the audience wondering, I suspect].

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And to be fair on Key, this is a far more entertaining account of this plague: a rich source of perfectly observed, often laugh-out-loud humour than never shies away from the malaise, the melancholy, the isolation, the futility, the political incompetence and the uncertainty that has blighted the last year. It's semi-autobiographical meaning it's not entirely clear what he's invented with his own imagination (I mean, did he have a cow on his balcony? Was there even a mouse?!) but I feel like this just highlights the chaos of the pandemic and the stuff we all had to do to cope. Instead, He Used Thought As A Wife is primarily a compelling character study of his peevish poet persona at his most irritable, condescending and insecure. The jaunty bonhomie of his blokey middle-aged banter which he so accurately nails is tissue-thin, a passive-aggressive frustration scratching through every superficially jovial turn-of phrase. A latter-day Samuel Pepys, chronicling the modern bubonic plague for posterity... a hilarious portrait of an artist just about creatively keeping his funk at bay" i His admittedly unreliable recollections are a delight, despite, or possibly because of, the undertow of despair that he’s trying not to confront. Key’s decline is charted with a dry and ever-present wit, which frequently erupts into a bluntly funny line that elicits a hard, inappropriate laugh.

He Used Thought As A Wife: An Anthology of Poems

Almost a theatre performance in its dialogues, a novella in its narrative and it’s also the worst possible phrase: ‘a character study’. Not only of Key, but all of us across 2020. Slow, plodding & frequently in a daytime bath - ‘Thought as a Wife’ harrows and entertains in equal measure.Just as the pattern becomes predictable the book takes an interesting meta-turn that is enjoyable, and self aware. Alone in this intersection of spoken waffle and poetry, there’s nothing else like Tim’s writing and it’s in top form here. Moreso than the books 2021 Sequel ‘Mulberry’ that loses much of this books charm by changing setting to outdoors. Tim’s Flat, complete with floor plan provided, does claustrophobia like a fart in a lift. Well humoured, but dense and suffocating. It's SO good?? Wtf Tim, your brain is a wonder and I'm in awe. The book is very funny, joyful, perfectly odd, sad, relatable and... cozy? I felt snuggled up reading this book. It took care of me.