- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; First Edition edition (7 April 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 074759175X
- ISBN-13: 978-0747591757
- Product Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 284,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
PRAISE FOR 'THE BOOK OF DAVE' 'Extraordinary brilliant and engaging ... tender and strange' Philip Hensher, Spectator 'Dazzling and hilarious' Time Out 'His most imaginative, most dazzling and most moving book yet' Rick Moody, Esquire
Product Description
Tom Brodzinski is a man who takes his own good intentions for granted. But when he finally decides to give up smoking, a moment's inattention to detail becomes his undoing. Flipping the butt of his final cigarette off the balcony of the holiday apartment he's renting with his family, Tom is appalled when it lands on the head of one his fellow countrymen, Reggie Lincoln. The elderly Lincoln is badly burnt, and since the cigarette butt passed through public space before hitting him, the local authorities are obliged to regard Tom's action as an assault, despite his benign intentions. Worse is to follow: Lincoln is married to a native from one of the rigorous, mystical tribes of the desert interior, and their customary law is incorporated into the civil statute. In order to make reparations to Mrs Lincoln's people, Tom will have to leave his family behind, and carry the appropriate goods and chattels deep into the arid heart of this strange, island continent. Any of this might be bearable, were it not for Tom's companion, forced on him by his enigmatic lawyer, the mixed-race Jethro Swai-Phillips. Brian Prentice, like Tom, has to make reparations and although there is a taboo that prevents either man from knowing the exact detail of the other's offence, Tom's almost 100% certain that he's a child-abuser. As they drive into the desert and encounter a violent counter-insurgency war that Tom has allowed himself to remain in ignorance of, the relationship between the two men becomes one of complicit guilt as well as seething mistrust. Refusing facile moral certitudes, Will Self's latest novel is set in a distorted world, in a country that is part Australia, part Iraq, part Greeneland and part the heart of a distinctively modern darkness.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Irredeemable,
By
This review is from: The Butt (Paperback)
I quite liked Self's earlier books. The Quantity Theory of Insanity was amusing, Great Apes was internally consistent. This book however places him in the camp with so many British authors who have a large vocabulary but nothing to say.
I'm unsure what I hated most about it - the ridiculous plot, the bizarre speech patterns of the protagonists, the unconvincing attempts to tie up the loose ends, or just the over-riding smugness of the authorial voice. I was lured into buying the book by a 3 for 2 offer and the reviews on the paperback written by his media mates. It is not 'wonderfully ingenious' or 'raucously imaginative'. It is neither 'Swiftian' nor 'Kafkaesque'. Satire, such as a Modest Proposal, works because we understand the mindset of those being lampooned. In contrast, the Butt comes over as the ramblings of a middle-Englander out of his depth in nasty old foreignland. It slots in with the tranche of recent films (Taken, Babel and Transsiberian)which, though they have their moments, labour under the sub-text that if you leave the comfort of your nice Western life, bad things will happen and you will have only yourself to blame. It reminded me of an extended Christmas round-robin diatribe - 'and you'll never guess what happened to us next...' The butt that Tom Brodzinski flicked off his balcony was the last cigarette he ever smoked. The Butt will be the last Will Self book I shall ever read. I already feel healthier.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Abysmal,
By
This review is from: The Butt (Paperback)
There really nothing much to say other than the title. I was given this book as a gift and felt I owed it to the person giving me the book to read it in its entirety. I would have happily given up half way through for all of the reasons other people have given. There is no plot, the use of language does not make up, in any part, for all the other failings of the novel, and it really does fail in every other area. The overall impression of the book is that it is pointless, it doesn't say anything, the long rambling descriptions of the supposedly fictional cultures are simply boring with nothing of interest to note....avoid this book at all costs.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Absurd,
By
This review is from: The Butt (Hardcover)
The language of this novel is richly textured and full of masterful metaphor. One example of many is: "Adams chose his words as fastidiously as a spinster selecting Scrabble tiles". Enjoyment of the masterful use of language was where the pleasure of this book ended for me, however. This is the kind of book that I think readers will either love or hate. The enigmatic and intriguing opening, where we are introduced to the bizarre culture of the country where the novel is set, sees the central character facing criminal charges for thoughtlessly flicking his cigarette butt onto an old man's head. For me, the book became less and less intriguing as absurdity was piled onto absurdity as the plot continued. One bizarre example is the towns in the desert where insurance policies are sold to multiple parties with conditions that the last of the policyholders to die collects the entire payout. Rampant killing ensues but the practice continues as it is supposedly beneficial to the economy.
The novel is largely allegorical in nature, but allegory is powerful when it is subtle. There is nothing subtle about demonstrating the arbitrary nature of culture by having natives in the desert wearing Austrian national costume to serve a psychologically disturbed anthropologist who has saved their tribe by inventing a culture for them when they had none. I can see how the imaginative nature of this story might appeal to some, but others will find the absurdity to be a bit too much.
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