Although he has been far more prolific as a dramatist, Keith Waterhouse's critical reputation rests primarily on two novels: Billy Liar (1959) and its sequel, Billy Liar on the Moon (1975), both of which have been praised for their comic excellence and general manic perspective on a Walter Mitty-type character. These and Waterhouse's other five novels reflect a sardonic, even cynical perspective, in which seemingly doomed characters flounder as they attempt to discover who they are and what they have to offer the world. Waterhouse uses humor, especially exaggeration and wit, as a calculated, objective means of showing his characters to be both psychically and ethically empty. When one reads a Waterhouse novel, he feels as if he has intruded into the private life of a misfit, an effect attributable both to the novelist's skill in investing depressing characters and situations with humor and to his brilliant handling of the...