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A review by batrock
Cheer the F**K Up: How to Save your Best Friend by Jack Rooke
3.0
This book almost certainly will have had a swell in support from the success of the Channel 4 sitcom Big Boys. It was published at a time when Jack Rooke should have known better but just before he really really should have known better. Which is to say: Cheer the Fuck Up, a study of grief and the aftershocks of suicide, is littered with wall-to-wall Harry Potter references. At the time of publication it would have been embarrassing. In 2024, a book about LGBT+ mental health issues with all of this in it should be reissued with the sections either removed or scored through in bright red ink.
Cheer the Fuck Up is moving when it comes to a young man sharing the horrible experience of his father dying very abruptly at a relatively young age. There's quite a lot else to recommend it but after a while it becomes very clear that it's the work of a 25 year old man (still a baby) reflecting on the naiveté of his youth (baby). By the time you get to the suicide, there's something oddly numbing at play, like Rooke is well intentioned but not really qualified for the job (disclaimer: I may be older than Rooke but I am willing to admit that he is better equipped than me).
There are also things that he shouldn't have put on the record, like he finds plays long and boring (an interview published less than a month before the time of writing this bears the headline "Phoebe Waller-Bridge just asked me to write her a play"). There's also the concern that even before he starts abusing alcohol as a grief coping mechanism, there's a lot of worrisome alcohol consumption between these pages.
Cheer the Fuck Up is a scattershot approach to its subject matter, only sometimes seeming to have a through line, then wandering off into the wilderness. Rooke's talents are considerable, and used with laser focus (and better results) in Big Boys. He's a valuable member of society, but Cheer the Fuck Up really tapers off, and the end feels like shit simply got too real for him with only the scantest of lip service paid to legitimate issues in his life. On top of that it reads as a really bizarre non-coming out story, but that's real life for you. I'm legitimately curious whether this book has proven useful to anyone; if it has, I'm glad.
(Also dubious: Rooke expresses lust for a young Keir Starmer, and says of his accommodation: “it was a bit like living next to a non-famous, bisexual Amy Schumer.” Literally nothing in this book has aged well).
Cheer the Fuck Up is moving when it comes to a young man sharing the horrible experience of his father dying very abruptly at a relatively young age. There's quite a lot else to recommend it but after a while it becomes very clear that it's the work of a 25 year old man (still a baby) reflecting on the naiveté of his youth (baby). By the time you get to the suicide, there's something oddly numbing at play, like Rooke is well intentioned but not really qualified for the job (disclaimer: I may be older than Rooke but I am willing to admit that he is better equipped than me).
There are also things that he shouldn't have put on the record, like he finds plays long and boring (an interview published less than a month before the time of writing this bears the headline "Phoebe Waller-Bridge just asked me to write her a play"). There's also the concern that even before he starts abusing alcohol as a grief coping mechanism, there's a lot of worrisome alcohol consumption between these pages.
Cheer the Fuck Up is a scattershot approach to its subject matter, only sometimes seeming to have a through line, then wandering off into the wilderness. Rooke's talents are considerable, and used with laser focus (and better results) in Big Boys. He's a valuable member of society, but Cheer the Fuck Up really tapers off, and the end feels like shit simply got too real for him with only the scantest of lip service paid to legitimate issues in his life. On top of that it reads as a really bizarre non-coming out story, but that's real life for you. I'm legitimately curious whether this book has proven useful to anyone; if it has, I'm glad.
(Also dubious: Rooke expresses lust for a young Keir Starmer, and says of his accommodation: “it was a bit like living next to a non-famous, bisexual Amy Schumer.” Literally nothing in this book has aged well).