Book review: Frank

Did you see the movie, Frank? The one with Michael Fassbender? It was released back in 2014. If you didn’t see it, you should; it’s a really great (if quite weird) movie and it’s well worth a watch. Incidentally, if you saw The Men Who Stare at Goats you might recognise a bit of the humour, Jon Ronson was involved in writing both of them.

 

Frank by Jon Ronson

 

I’m a big Jon Ronson fan, so when I saw that this book I knew I’d read it soon. Where the movie is a fictionalised account of Ronson’s time spent playing the keyboards for the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band, the book tells the true story that inspired the movie.

It compliments the movie perfectly and if you’re a fan of Ronson’s writing then you’re in for a treat. It’s a very, very short book (more of a long essay with a cover) and I finished it in less than 2 hours but I still feel its worth reading, and worth owning. It includes a few photographs of band members (including Ronson) and other bits and pieces and it’s just a really nice story.

You know how difficult it can be, reading a book and watching the movie that goes with it? How you worry one will ruin the other, or one will be significantly better? The nice thing about this book is that it just made me want to watch the movie again.

I think I’d advise watching it first, if you haven’t seen it already. That’s the way around that I did it and I enjoyed doing it that way around. So I guess I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s seen the movie, or to anyone who likes Jon Ronson. To anyone who doesn’t know of Jon Ronson and who hasn’t seen the movie, I recommend you watch it and that you read one of his other collections first; you’ll want something more substantial to sink your teeth into.