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The Butt
 
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The Butt (Hardcover)

by Will Self (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (7 April 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 074759175X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0747591757
  • Product Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 199,553 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #22 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Self, Will

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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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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Absurd, 20 May 2008
By Gordon Eldridge (Southport, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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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19 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Self hits the road, 8 April 2008
Will Self's uproariously horrible novel The Butt retains the author's recent forays into the creation of entire fictional territories but also adds a hefty dash of post 9/11 liberal paranoia. This is grand, interrogative satire, which revels in making the reader uncomfortable, questioning their every motivation beyond their initial notions of altruism or benevolence. The bulk of the novel takes the form of a road trip through a foreboding country reminiscent of both Australia and Iraq, undertaken by two men making recompense for their crimes, one apparently trivial, one (it is hinted) deadly serious. Frequently hilarious - in the way that Self provokes laughs which are often accompanied by a groan of self-knowledge - both novel and characters traverse difficult, occasionally terrifying territory, with Self's themes offering both comical and deadly straight response to writers such as Joseph Conrad and James Frazer. This reader's initial expectations - that the journey will illustrate how Conrad's fear of primitivism has just mutated into a rather tedious series of globalised bureaucracies - were confounded in the most fantastically horrible way as the characters make their way towards journey's end. There is something much more horrible and fundamental lurking at Self's heart of darkness. Self's prose is as masterful as ever and this excursion into bigger geographical territory is an exciting development. Highly recommended.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars BAFFLEMENT, 10 Sep 2009
By E. M. Watt "Watermark" (Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
-I got the impression that WS simply couldn't get Tom Brodzinski out of the mess he'd got him into. Of course I appreciated the swipes at various religions, the Law and Australia but I still am no more sure of what he was working towards than I am about Bladder Clams! I think that when the Snark becane a Boojum - he gave up!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
I was looking forward to this book after really enjoying the Book of Dave and Great Apes. I have to say I was very disappointed. Read more
Published 2 months ago by A Reader

4.0 out of 5 stars Post Iraq multi-cultarism
Most books by Will Self start to unravel about 3/4 of the way in, as the brilliantly original premises can no longer sustain the narrative and all the jokes have been used up. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Keith D. Brown

1.0 out of 5 stars The Butt Will Self
Quite poor. Started well, then drifted into absurdity that just wasn't funny. Struggled to finish this which is rare for me.
Published 5 months ago by Thomas Heneghan

2.0 out of 5 stars Just gets boring...
When I first started reading this book I really thought that I would enjoy it. The writing style and use of the English language sets you thinking that this is a man who can... Read more
Published 5 months ago by C. A. Brown

4.0 out of 5 stars Has Irvine Welsh read this book, I wonder!
This is another excellent and extremely funny book from the fabulous Will Self. Perhaps not so cleverly written as previous books, particularly the amazingly well-thought out Book... Read more
Published 14 months ago by C. Bailes

5.0 out of 5 stars Surreal in the manner of...
A chip-vendor punctuates the mawkish excoriations of this handsome text. For are we not fashionable? In our failings, in our dealings? Read more
Published 17 months ago by Professor Bjorn Hagforth

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