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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A debut novel that has everything..., 18 Jan 2008
That corny but useful little accolade 'unputdownable' could succinctly say it all about Kev Saunders' debut novel 'Wotcha!', but it doesn't really do justice to this gem of a book, because Mr Saunders can write, I mean, he can genuinely, most definitely WRITE. This is quality stuff, from the opening chapter, with its beautifully vivid but troubling portrait of a family walk on a bleak coastal landscape (amidst the stench of seaweed and wood rot and those rusty padlocks you can already smell the sickness of the human psyche), to the final fast-moving chapters that offer an exhilarating and macabre carnival of rescue, redemption and revenge - it's more than a racy romp through a sticky web of lies and lives.
The story is excellently crafted, masterfully controlled (even with the electric blue language) and gorgeously and most lustfully written. There is a slick cinematic feel in its artful episodic weave. Imaginative creations aside, Kev Saunders seems to write about what he knows, about people and places he knows and has known. The author's voice is authoritative, his characters' voices authentic. There is lewdness mixed with lyricism, real pathos amidst the pantomime, narcotics laced with narcissism, vicious humour cavorting with extreme voyeurism. And, it has to be said, this book is funny.
Our hero, one-time rock star Richard `Winston' Smith is the central character and lynchpin for all other supporting characters with their narrative perspectives. This somewhat debauched, arrogant but witty, incorrigible but `lovable rogue' has (just about) survived the hedonistic and cynical world of late 20th century sex, drugs and rock `n' roll only to enter - alas, hedonist and deeper-cynic still - a darker, more twisted and sadistic world, one which is brilliantly and intricately linked up with the brutal events, liaisons and secrecies of the past. Smith, in a suitably surreal, corrupt, clumsy yet poetic fashion, acquires a motley crew of characters round him - wild, eccentric, ruthless, loyal, greedy, kind, callous, vain, scheming, naïve, vulnerable...Bit by bit, grim truths are revealed and it takes a clever conspiracy employing perverse professional deviancies of one kind to uncover another - and the nature of this other, though horrific, is handled in an honest, sensitive and perceptive way by Saunders.
While poor Rich Smith is unequivocally our good bloke with a heart - despite his troubled soul and addictive tendencies - the richer and ruthless Bart Raines, victim-turned-vengeful-voyeur, is possibly one of the most original, disturbing, repellent yet compelling characters you'll ever encounter in a (post-) post-modern novel. Although not the true villain of the story, he is, in soul and incarnate, born from a deadly centre of unspeakable corruption, and those roots he nurtures through his earth-world of employees and enemies and his ether-world of the Internet.
The pace never lets up, although the shifts from one narrative voice to another and the time travel across decades and generations allow us breadth of vision and breathing spaces. The dialogue in the novel is varied and the author avoids the danger of over-indulging his foulmouth fest of word-pun, quip, cheeky banter and backchat. Difficult when you know this writer must have a passion for words, their music and their teasing possibilities. And music echoes in so many ways throughout the story, nostalgically and mockingly, snatches of a pop-song, the snarling of a punk lyric: chants and refrains that haunt the hunter and the hunted.
In that laddish and Loaded kind of way, sure, there are chills, thrills and pills in Wotcha!, but this is not the vague and lifeless anatomy of soft porn that pulp fiction might offer up, this is a palpable, breathing body of narrative, very much alive and kicking. And it succeeds, beyond entertaining, to `anatomize' personal and violent histories to find `any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts' (to plagiarise a bit from the Old Bard, himself.) Kev Saunders, like any good dramatist, novelist or screenwriter - knows how to woo the intelligent reader/viewer, by making the ordinary both extraordinary and poignant and by showing us (without telling us) how you can't escape your past; hubris with all its excessive entourage is bound to fall; Nemesis will track down the tyrant; the innocent will suffer; but love, whatever the tragic outcomes, can (perhaps) in the bittersweet end, conquer all.
And finally, I have to add that it's true, I really couldn't put this book down.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to get bags under your eyes!!, 7 Jan 2008
This is the most gripping book I have read in a long time...so much so that I am now suffering from ever more droopy bags under my eyes as a result of reading 'Wotcha' until 1.30 every morning!! I want to finish the book as soon as possible, 'cause I want to know what happens but at the same time, I want it to last for ever (or at least until Kev Saunders has finished writing his next book!). If you got a book voucher as a present this Christmas, it would be well used on this book...if you didn't get a voucher, buy it anyway.....and join the ever increasing Kev Saunders' fan base with bags under their eyes!!!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Rollicking Roller-Coaster of Rock and Roll, 17 May 2009
The perfect mix of raw sex, drugs and rock and roll with black humoured comedy written in beautiful poetic prose; how on earth did Saunders do it?
If this book sounds like your bag, then the characters (so alive, you will beleive they exist) will be you friends and enemies rolled into one. If not then this book will open your eyes and give you an insight into how others live their lifes.
This book should come with a health warning, it is so addictive that your life will temporarily change; you will be totally incapable of putting it down. The only downside is the disappointment of finishing the last page and the not knowing when or if Saunders will produce another like it.
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