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Review
Praise for The Book of Dave:
'Self is...a master of demotic speech and -- rare breed this side of the Channel -- a novelist of ideas' Sunday Telegraph
'Epic and bitterly funny, this new stew of satire and linguistic wizardry is everything you'd expect from Britain's master of misanthropy' Arena
'Self has upped his ante from Monty Python to Jonathan Swift, and gone straight to brilliant hell' Harper's
Review
Classic Self...This is what Self does best: snap-shots of decline and high-concept satires of the 'slapstick of addiction'.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
4 stories all on a liverish theme in this collection. Will Self has for a while now served up stories that portray our consciousness as a ragged, fleeting entity. Human beings, especially those living in urban connurbations are merely bags of desires, needing instant gratification. Qualities such as beauty, care, love, commitment and meaning has exited stage left long ago.
3 of the stories focus on the familiar Selfland of media London. 'Foie Humain' is set in the Plantation Club (a roman a clef on the notorious Colony room, now shut down) whose denizens perpetuate a filthy gavage like the geese farmers of the Dordogne on their hapless barman.
Prometheus is a modern retelling of the Prometheus myth set in the glib, drug fuelled London advertising scene. Prometheus is a wildly successful copywriter, who can breathe fire into the most sodden of products, but he is chained to the porcelain rock of his toilet while a vulture feeds on his liver every day, followed by regeneration. A nice trope to define much of modern London media life.
Drugs feature in the final story, Birdy Num Num, told from the viewpoint of the hepatitis C virus, another interesting exercise in Self probing new fictional angles but the result is like some of his earlier fictional ideas from his drug phase - an interesting conceit that is underworked in the execution.
Leberknodel (Liver Dumplings) is a novella length story that leaves London and instead treads the less worn fictional terrain of Zurich. Joyce is a retired hospital administrator with cancer who travels to Switzerland with her daughter. Regretting her lack of appreciation of the small trivial things in life, she turns down the lethal dose, and miraculously finds that her cancer has gone into submission. Now - in the cockpit of Swiss orderliness - she has plenty of time to appreciate the mundane, but at what price?
Self is a witty and acerbic satirist, who can draw out mot justes and acid turns of phrase from his quiver as fleetingly at Robin Hood drew arrows. Writing comes easily to him. But beneath the surface of the thousands of words he hammers out each year, you can sense his deep disappointment with humanity. Like all the best satirists, Self believes we humans are capable of better. The most revealing passages in Liver are not the verbose deconstructions of London topography 'the sphincter of the Old Street roundabout', nor its ghastly inhabitants, but the odd peans to beauty and humanity - a red admiral butterfly, the thought of a reformed prisoner teaching children with learning difficulties.
Selfland is a murky place, and Will Self takes on the wretched fictional job of forcing his nose up against its many smelly vices and uglinesses. But he has also become a self confessed walking addict in recent years, and his perambulations enable him to escape the filth of trendy London, and appreciate a human existence that can be more elevated, even if only fleetingly.
3 of the stories focus on the familiar Selfland of media London. 'Foie Humain' is set in the Plantation Club (a roman a clef on the notorious Colony room, now shut down) whose denizens perpetuate a filthy gavage like the geese farmers of the Dordogne on their hapless barman.
Prometheus is a modern retelling of the Prometheus myth set in the glib, drug fuelled London advertising scene. Prometheus is a wildly successful copywriter, who can breathe fire into the most sodden of products, but he is chained to the porcelain rock of his toilet while a vulture feeds on his liver every day, followed by regeneration. A nice trope to define much of modern London media life.
Drugs feature in the final story, Birdy Num Num, told from the viewpoint of the hepatitis C virus, another interesting exercise in Self probing new fictional angles but the result is like some of his earlier fictional ideas from his drug phase - an interesting conceit that is underworked in the execution.
Leberknodel (Liver Dumplings) is a novella length story that leaves London and instead treads the less worn fictional terrain of Zurich. Joyce is a retired hospital administrator with cancer who travels to Switzerland with her daughter. Regretting her lack of appreciation of the small trivial things in life, she turns down the lethal dose, and miraculously finds that her cancer has gone into submission. Now - in the cockpit of Swiss orderliness - she has plenty of time to appreciate the mundane, but at what price?
Self is a witty and acerbic satirist, who can draw out mot justes and acid turns of phrase from his quiver as fleetingly at Robin Hood drew arrows. Writing comes easily to him. But beneath the surface of the thousands of words he hammers out each year, you can sense his deep disappointment with humanity. Like all the best satirists, Self believes we humans are capable of better. The most revealing passages in Liver are not the verbose deconstructions of London topography 'the sphincter of the Old Street roundabout', nor its ghastly inhabitants, but the odd peans to beauty and humanity - a red admiral butterfly, the thought of a reformed prisoner teaching children with learning difficulties.
Selfland is a murky place, and Will Self takes on the wretched fictional job of forcing his nose up against its many smelly vices and uglinesses. But he has also become a self confessed walking addict in recent years, and his perambulations enable him to escape the filth of trendy London, and appreciate a human existence that can be more elevated, even if only fleetingly.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An excellent collection (one novella, three short stories) from Self. Felt to me like a return to some of his earlier work - which is no bad thing. Great cover too. Highly recommended whether you're an established fan or a newcomer.
Format:Hardcover
A strange one. This collection of short stories, thematically unified by livers in various stages of failure, bears the familiar hallmarks that make Will Self so worth reading. Each of the stories revolve around a pleasing enough conceit. And the first two stories here are truly brilliant. Witty and poignant, they crackle with grotesques and pugnacious prose.
But the final two, shorter, stories feel like after-thoughts. Although Self imbues each with its own voice and its own stylistic modes, neither really transcends the kind of throw-away idea that might be found in one of his columns or as a sub-plot to a thicker narrative. The very disparity between the length and depth of the better-crafted first half and these pieces only reinforces the experience of them as page fillers. As hard as this may be in practice, I would advise anybody buying this book to skip the second half. I say that only because you really should buy this on the strength of the opening tales, not to mention the physical beauty of the thing.
But the final two, shorter, stories feel like after-thoughts. Although Self imbues each with its own voice and its own stylistic modes, neither really transcends the kind of throw-away idea that might be found in one of his columns or as a sub-plot to a thicker narrative. The very disparity between the length and depth of the better-crafted first half and these pieces only reinforces the experience of them as page fillers. As hard as this may be in practice, I would advise anybody buying this book to skip the second half. I say that only because you really should buy this on the strength of the opening tales, not to mention the physical beauty of the thing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
another winner
another brilliant book from mr.self.a highly imaginative selection of stories .you probally won't touch another drink again . & a great cover. Read more
Published on 7 Mar 2009 by D. S. Sample
killer riffs, shame about the songs...
Having looked forward to, and having ploughed through, Liver this week, I have to say I found it to be a real disappointment. Read more
Published on 14 Nov 2008 by Mr. Steve Jansen
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