I don’t remember if I learned about Mil Millington through his website or his book first. Both have the same title – Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. The premise had very little depth. Millington, a British writer, has a German girlfriend who he argued with a lot. So he put the substance of those arguments online. Then someone convinced him to turn them into a novel.

The book came out in 2002. I have had it on my reading list for a few years now and finally got it from the library a month or so ago. After reading the book and taking the whole situation into careful consideration, I have one thing to say.

You should have stopped at the website, Mil.

I have a thing about always finishing books. This one required me to renew it from the library twice. I still had to push out the final 100 pages or so in the last day or two before it was due. I almost just gave up, but needed to see if something saved the whole exercise at the end. That didn’t happen.

The concept of taking the small arguments between a couple and weaving a story around them should not be too difficult. Millington, however, created such horrible, unlikeable characters that nothing really mattered. You realized these weren’t just arguments that we all have. These people just had no redeeming qualities.

Maybe that’s how he and his girlfriend are in real life. Maybe this ranks in some subset of British humor that I just don’t get. After all, he won accolades for the book when it was published and has enjoyed a successful career since then.

I just don’t get it. Taking the worst part of a relationship, pretending that it’s normal to hate everything about each other and mixing in a weak and directionless story about the guy’s job doesn’t really rank as a ground-breaking achievement in humor to me.

The good thing is, if he and his girlfriend really disagree on everything, I guess one of them will think this is the most amazingly intelligent opinion on the book ever.