Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Harsh, lewd and depressing, 5 Jun 2006
A disparaging review in the Metro had the perverse effect of making me rush to Waterstones. I guess there really is no such thing as bad advertising. I saw the cover, skimmed the blurb and bought the book. Being a twentysomething Sikh guy living in london for the past few years, I wondered if the book chimed with my experiences.
There is some overlap in the protagonist's childhood and mine. In parts my views agreed with the author's, some admittedly politically unfriendly. Ultimately though, the overlap is superficial. Instead of seeing myself, I visualised the handful of arrogant idiots I'd met when first arriving in london.
Puppy is loathsome. I have no problem with people spending their lives smoking, drinking, screwing and aimlessly drifting through life. It's a free country. It's the lying, free-loading and cheating that's difficult to stomach. Puppy succeeds in being a loser, despite innate intelligence. He experiences fleeting moments of happiness, instead being generally depressed. He certainly doesn't live up to the billing of "living life to the full".
The author is harsh in his view of london, clinically disecting races and the sexes into predefined stereotypes. The book also contains a shed-load of sex scenes, making it often read like it's written by a frustrated teenager, or someone frustrated they missed out on that aspect of their youth. Nevertheless I found Tourism entertaining. It certainly isn't for everyone's tastes, being too blunt in many respects.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply unpleasant, but not in an interesting way, 12 Mar 2007
It seems really disturbing that in an age dominated by celebrity TV and soul-baring Hello-style interviews, even supposed "literary fiction" is not immune. The reason I say this? Well, there is no conceivable reason that this sleazy, half-hearted attempt at a novel would have made it this far were it not for the deeply unpleasant, no-holds barred coverage received by its deeply misogynistic author and his long-suffering (though equally depressing partner) in the Daily Mail and elsewhere.
As a novel, it just doesn't work. Dhaliwal seems desperate to ape his literary heroes but in doing so is reaching way beyond his own means and falls flat (as his prose) on his face, over and over again. And as the last reviewer suggests, the principal character is so obviously autobiographical - there is no difference between "Puppy" and "Nirpal" - that one can only conclude that he is a deeply mean-spirited, deliberately vindictive and unpleasant person. Just not in an interesting way. And to steal from another reviewer he's guilty of "clinically disecting races and the sexes into predefined stereotypes." Here, Dhaliwal mistakes being "controversial" with having something important to say. He has nothing to add to the debate - about identity, race, modern life - at least nothing beyond an A-level essay attempt. (For a more interesting and informed look at these issues someone like Sarfraz Manzoor, in the Guardian, leaves him for dead.)
Alas, there's nothing here of substance aside from an ego the side of a house and an aspiration that significantly outweighs his talent.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly packaged tourism..., 26 Sep 2007
If Tourism were a package holiday, it would be a gerry-built Spanish resort dump on the Costa Del Crap, circa 1974. This is a truly woeful piece of construction - a muddled, confused, half-baked "creative" writing course novel-by-the numbers. It's full of bad sex, banal dialogue and characters so wooden, the author should take up carpentry and ditch writing. Had it not been for the gratuitous support of his columnist wife, Liz Jones, Tourism would've crashed and burned long ago. Utter rubbish.
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