Published this year (2025), Broken Biscuits and Other Male Failures is Farrer’s second book after the award winning Cold Fish Soup. Broken Biscuits is a series of essays (but this reads excitingly like short stories) based around his life with the subject being musing on his failures to meet the assumed cultural ideals of manliness.
Firstly, this collection is very funny. I think within the first ten pages I’d already laughed out loud and this continued within each of the chapters. I read quite a lot of amusing books, but rarely have I quite laughed with the involuntary compulsion and regularity that I have with Broken Biscuits. So, chapeau to Farrer for his ability to craft and interweave humour so well.
That Broken Biscuits is hilarious is due to Farrer’s ability to meld light and shade. Farrer sprinkles in humour at precisely the correct points for emphasis. He certainly has an incredibly broad range of life experiences to pull from and he describes each with great candour; there is an openness that is refreshing, particularly on a number of intimate topics that we rarely hear men describe. There is real depth and reflection here too: a message in each chapter to sit with long after the book is closed. For me, two such examples are ‘Broken Biscuits’ and ‘Bonnie Black Hare’. Both of these chapters are prime examples of where the humour draws you in and the depth of material keeps you there – entertained and emotionally engaged.
In an age where misogyny, abuse and the incel manosphere seem to be rising, Broken Biscuits is timely and can form part of a cultural counterweight. The essays describe a variety of examples where Farrer has failed to live up to some expectation of ‘maleness’ or ‘manliness’ and don’t necessarily show him always taking the ‘correct’ path. Naturally, these stories highlight that many cultural expectations for maleness are archaic at best and require challenging and a thorough rewiring brought about through communication.
What Broken Biscuits is brilliant at is bringing in the space for contemplation on these topics; to ask how things might have been had other choices been made. These stories aren’t dogmatic but gently and humorously reflective, allowing Farrer to illustrate other paths to ‘manliness’. As is suggested by the front cover, it isn’t necessarily possessing an ‘Action Man’ physique, nor aspects of smoking, drinking, sex etc. Farrer does help make a case for a new definition through showing the reader what it isn’t. He illustrates that on our search for our own understanding, mistakes can happen along the way and there is always a capacity for change.
Credit to Farrer for sharing these stories in a way that is both as funny as it is meaningful. I found the tempo of writing to be excellent and it pulls you along through the conjuration of jokes alongside the ‘one-two’ punches of reality.
I also found it to be a nice touch from publishers Harper North to include a credit section in addition to the author’s own acknowledgments. These endeavours are always bigger and require more help and support than you would expect, so it’s nice to see all the people that helped make this work happen.
A must read in this cultural climate. You will laugh, you will think.
D