RODDY Doyle is a wonderful writer. If there's a funnier novel than The Van, part of his cracking Commitments trilogy, I've not read it.

So it was with eager anticipation that I took home The Meanwhile Adventures. This is Doyle's third children's novel, but the first that we had tried.

I was expecting something funny, imaginative and original, and The Meanwhile Adventures is all these.

Somehow, though, it doesn't work. There are laugh-out-loud lines, and some great ideas: a woman competing to become the first person to run around the world without telling anyone, for example.

But it is deliberately disjointed - the title is a reference to the fact that "meanwhile" is used every few paragraphs to switch the action.

That makes the book as frenzied as a Loony Tunes cartoon, with no time devoted to developing character or enjoying the journey.

By the end I couldn't care whether Mister Mack the inventor was freed from jail. Judging by five-year-old Jack's request to change to another book, neither could he.

Updated: 09:46 Wednesday, October 13, 2004