Books like The Death of Eli Gold

I really struggled with the first hundred pages of this book. The first problem I ran into was the intrinsic Baddielness of the book. That is to say, if you know who David Baddiel is and grew up with him you can hear his voice overwhelmingly throughout the text. This is of course, 50% awesome if you're a Baddiel fan like me, but also 50% irritating, as you're unable to completely immerse yourself in the story without hearing his voice. Especially when I came across the word "genuine". David Baddiel often uses the sentence "I genuinely believe(d)..." quite often on the telly / radio, so when I read that word I totally grinned out loud. The second problem was that Harvey, the main protagonist is very introspective, so he'd have thought streams that seemed to continue for twenty pages. It was no Mrs Dalloway but I did sigh as I had to read all through that.After that first chunk and the story kicked in, I enjoyed it a lot more and stayed up late to finish it. It's a good read. I did feel like one of the storylines was a little superfluous but I really liked Collette, the sour sweet touches and the Baddielness.PS Actually am I writing this channelling David Baddiel? Does he say "that is to say" too? Or am I imagining that.PPS If there's a Goodreads prize for most uses of the word Baddiel in a review, can I win it? And I made Baddielness into a adjective, just as his first comedy husband Robert Newman did in his novel to Björk. PPPS I realise this makes me sound like a crazy Baddiel fan. I'm really not, I mean I love his stuff and will travel to West London from East to see him record Radio 4 panel pilots but I think the book's done this to me. Beware.PPPPS Was delighted at the Maureen Lipman blink-and-you-miss-it cameo