by In 2017, when Vice Media was at its reckless peak and virality was the currency of a writer, the name Joel Golby became synonymous with a certain kind of home journalism. He was Vice’s most read author, with a lover’s humor softened by a very English streak of self-deprecation and elevated by a knack for the raw or the silly – pubs, house parties, landlords, drugs – turned into a sharp reflection on modern life. His feature on “101 ways to ruin a party” remains one of the funniest articles on the internet. His style was so distinctive that I once selected a cocktail menu at a bar in east London and felt convinced that Golby had ghostwritten it. I asked the bartender, who, a little stunned, said, yes, they were friends.
Like all young writers, Golby has been described as the voice of his generation. Dolly Alderton called Golby “the millennium’s answer to Nora Ephron” (Elizabeth Day’s pace) “the millennium’s answer to David Sedaris”. The Guardian gave Golby a TV column. When he published his first book in 2019 – a memoir of sorts in the form of 21 personal essays – Sharon Horgan (and Russell Brand) snubbed him. Golby titled it Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, a mischievous title that seemed to put off most reviewers. But he’s nothing if not familiar: he said in an interview that although he found it funny at first, the title quickly became “very, very annoying” and that he failed to change it, despite He soon suspected, that he was “finally himself”.
That seems to be the spirit of his second book, Four Stars, also a kind of memoir, presented chronologically through reviews of different moments in his life with star ratings attached. Golby reviews the important and the abstract, from almond croissants (100 stars) and Howard Leight earplugs (five stars) to the phone call from his Guardian editor scolding him for using a column to fantasize about Victoria Pedretti. than review The Haunting of Hill House (zero stars).
It’s this phone call, we’re told, that sent Golby into a self-loathing funk. He began to question money, purpose, friendship, the fragile armor of masculinity, and the unprocessed grief of losing both of his parents by the age of 25. As with Brilliant…, it is on these questions that Golby demonstrates his undeniable talent as a writer. , able to distill relatable thoughts from the absurdities of everyday life. Killing a houseplant (zero stars), for example, prompts him to reflect on the “deep native poison that lives within me” and taps into a question we all neglect: the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person ‘ me? His review of obsessed with vitamin supplements leads to thoughts on male hair loss, incontinence and fertility.
The dialogue-poor reviews are the most memorable, especially those with his wise-cracking friend Michael, who scolds Golby for sending an emoji to a mutual friend who had just lost his mother. : just because you’ve dealt with grief doesn’t mean you know. how to help a friend with their. Similarly, when Golby responds to a male friend’s breakup by joking about following the veteran’s Instagram, he offers a somber but touching glimpse of male heroism. His friend replies, “I am well-disposed about my friend”; Golby passively watches the ‘typed’ announcement for a “very long time”, until his friend settles with “But yeah.” One of Golby’s last reviews, an imaginary conversation with his late father over a pint, is heartbreaking in its subtlety.
More heavy-handed, however, is the comedic filler. Brilliant… was at its weakest when Golby worked himself up in frothing rants about murdering evil landlords, or ranking every property he ever rented. While Four Stars has its laugh-out-loud moments – he describes responding to the phrase “sleep hygiene” with “the kind of horrible laugh that teaches goths to laugh at themselves instead of laying them down” – succeeds the tired slapstick comedy. It wouldn’t be interesting to review an interview he recorded by himself while eating a limited edition Big Mac and high weed gummies if I were high too. A paper cut review was, in my opinion, scraping the barrel.
And it was surprising to discover, after questioning some curious details with publicist Golby, that many “memories” here, such as that crucial phone call with the Guardian editor, were actually fiction. Golby was never fired. Semi-fictional memoirs can work well with grittier ambitions, but when so many chapters of Four Stars are purposefully mundane, or seem to exist only as vehicles for Golby’s punchlines, the inconsistency jars.
More and more, books by young, star-studded writers with social media followings leave you wondering if their editors are too desperate to do their job properly. A tight edit of the jokes, cutting some of those silly chapters entirely, would have allowed Golby’s natural humor to shine through. I also wonder if anyone, at the age of 36, can justify two memoirs – although that might explain why Golby had to make up some of this one.
Mudlark publishes Four Stars: A Life Reviewed for £16.99. To order your copy for £14.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
