Millington, Mil: Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

Villard © 2002, 373 pages [amazon]


It can't be a good thing when your boss tracks you down to ask what you know about extradition treaties. But Pel Dalton, Supervisor of the Computer Team in a university library--er, Learning Center--is too busy mowing down children at the time to think much of it:

"I jerk myself above the barricade and let rip with laser death at some attackers. One dives behind a box in panic like some kind of silly eight-year-old (admittedly he does look about eight years old) but I catch his companion (who's eleven if he's a day) on the shoulder and take him down."

Yet Pel might yet keep things under control at work--the requisite meetings with Chinese mafiosi, the disappeared colleagues, the nerve gas and would-be poltergeists--were his home life not so chaotic.Tapped to fill his abruptly resigned boss's shoes, Pel finds it harder than usual to feign competence. (He has about as firm a hold on his new responsibilities as Seinfeld's George Costanza did when called upon to handle the Penske file.) Yet Pel might yet keep things under control at work--the requisite meetings with Chinese mafiosi, the disappeared colleagues, the nerve gas and would-be poltergeists--were his home life not so chaotic. Pel lives with his German girlfriend Ursula and their two sons, and virtually every waking moment in their household is filled with the happy couple's bickering. Over every topic imaginable. Happily, their arguing does not arise from a deep-seated problem in their relationship: that would make it difficult reading. Petty arguments are simply their preferred mode of communication, and they do it marvelously.

"Did you hear that?"
"No."
"I'm sure I heard the door bang."
"It was probably just a dog somewhere."
"Yes, because--at night--a dog barking is almost indistinguishable from the sound of a door being smashed open, isn't it? Idiot."
"I didn't say a dog barking..."

Mil Millington--who, as it happens, lives with his German girlfriend Margret and their two children and who is apparently found wanting by Margret at least as often as Pel disappoints Ursula--is a writer worth watching. Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About is a hilarious, clever read about which I couldn't possibly say enough good things. Just do yourself a favor and buy it--buy it now, I mean--and read it, then get a few copies for your friends. It's really that good.

Tags: book reviews, Mil Millington, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About