A review by emckeon1002
He by John Connolly

5.0

Anyone who has stood next to me when my iPhone was ringing has probably chuckled. Most say: "Three Stooges?" I correct them and say: "Laurel and Hardy." My ringtone is Marvin Hatley's "Dance of the Cuckoos" which was noted, many years ago, by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/magazine/21FOB-medium-t.html), as possibly the first musical piece ever to use beeps as part of the score, when Hatley composed is for the comedy duo. It's my ringtone because I grew up on Laurel and Hardy shorts in the days when a 20-minute film was perfect for a thirty-minute TV segment, and local television was hungry for cheap filler. While I watched plenty of Three Stooges and Marx Brothers as a kid, and learned to recognize the genius of Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton as an adult, I always had a soft spot for Laurel and Hardy and the strange tension and affection that characterized their on-screen partnership. I enjoy John Connolly's writing, so when I read that he'd "reimagined" Stan Laurel's life in a fictional biography I ordered a copy. It took me a few (short) chapters to become captured by the spare inner monologues, and imagined dialogue, but I was hooked by the tragic story of a beautiful friendship and a lifetime of "fine messes." I loved this book, and the way Connolly has woven well-researched history while creating a deep sense of the emotional life of Laurel. I've rewatched several of the old shorts while reading, if only to determine whether Connolly captured the men behind the flickering images, and I think he has.