Customer Reviews

Blind Faith

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Purely by chance, I read this novel shortly after completing The Book Of Dave by Will Self. Both novels use an imagined dystopian future England, decimated after severe flooding covers half the country, for a satire about the state of the nation today. As both novels appeared around the same time, this is clearly a coincidence; both Self and Elton aim at many of the same targets, but while Self's satire is like the point of a dagger skilfully skewering his targets, Ben Elton prefers the repeated hammering over the head with a blunt instrument.

Not that there is anything wrong with this. Elton has addressed the vacuousness of modern life before, and he doesn't spare his anger here. Ben Elton, like Will Self, sets his aim squarely at religious dogmatism. He is clearly horrified by the rise in creationism in the USA, which is starting to make its presence felt in the UK, and takes this to its logical conclusion, where science and rationality are rejected in favour of the titular 'blind faith' and a 'me' culture.

The first thing you should know about this novel is that it isn't funny. At all. Anyone familiar with Ben Elton's work will know that he uses comic situations to address serious issues; there is precious little to laugh about in Blind Faith, just a growing horror as the fast-paced plot drags you in.

It is about 100 years in the future. After a flood, Britain has become a much smaller country. People not only live and work in extraordinary proximity to one another, but are ruled by a religious fanaticism where privacy is frowned upon and belief in evolution- in reason of any kind- is banned. Furthermore, every aspect of one's life is required to be posted online. But Trafford, our protagonist, has the makings of a dangerous subversive- he has a secret.

The plot similarity to 1984 is obvious, and Elton doesn't try to hide it, namechecking Orwell's work more than once. This is not a problem for me; the updating for a modern world is perfect, each target bringing a knowing nod from the reader. Ultimately, the despair in the story is equal to anything Orwell could think up; Elton does show us a chink of light at the close, but be warned it arrives at the end of a very long, dark tunnel.

As always with Elton, Blind Faith is a well-plotted easy read. However, for me the jaunty tone of the early chapters sits uneasily with the dark and cruel nature of the concluding section and as such I would not place it amongst his best work.

Many of the other reviewers have compared this book with Orwell's 1984 and without a doubt there are parallels. But what Elton also brings into play is an analysis of the current rise of religious fundamentalism and its rejection of science and logic. As well as being set in a post apocalypse police state this novel is also set in a world that has reverted to the dark ages where science is outlawed and faith is all that is to be believed.

A preview of a post global-warming world. The possible conclusion of today's FaceBook/You Tube and reality TV fixation. And a total denunciation of the mindlessness of reactionary religion. All in an easy to read and fast paced novel.

I do feel slightly guilty for disliking things Ben Elton writes. After all, he is one of the people behind Blackadder. Unfortunately, it turns out he's not exactly a great novelist.

Blind Faith is set in a future where climate change has flooded much of the Earth, overcrowding is everpresent, and people have turned their back on science and reason. Instead, society is a voyeuristic, exhibitionist, faith-based, reality-TV like mess. Everyone live streams almost every moment of their lives on the web; everyone has videos compiled of their most private memories (losing virginities, giving birth, etc.) and is sharing them with the entire world; and faith leaders control the society with an Inquisition and barbaric methods, while people are quick to form angry mobs that turn on individuals, screaming "pedo" and tearing them apart. Oh, and everyone is overweight, all the food is full of sugar, and people practice no self-restraint and celebrate themselves all the time.

In this mess lives Trafford, a man who rather likes privacy and has a sense of dignity / shame. He has a wife. They have a baby. And one day, someone suggests he might want to commit one of the vilest crimes of all, and vaccinate her (vaccines are heresy), in order to protect her from the many, many lethal plagues that decimate children (mumps, measles, etc.)

Trafford is one of those dystopian nobody-heroes that instantly remind the reader of 1984, Brave New World, Brazil, and other classics. A completely downtrodden little unimportant cog. Fine. Something sparks, and suddenly there are deadly secrets and subversion in his life. So far so good. Unfortunately, the book falls flat in almost every other regard.

Let's start with the little things: suspension of disbelief. It's impossible. Seriously, a world as overcrowded as this society could not sustain itself. Everyone eating all the time is a nice idea, but in a flooded world, where does the food grow? Talking of floods, sure, global warming will raise sea levels, but the effects in this book are Waterworldian - far beyond the credible. Even if we believe all that, how could this society of uneducated imbeciles (at one point, a book that isn't written for children is described as a challenge) ever function? People who make or repair plasma screens, fix internet connections, design buildings, etc. etc. etc. - they all need some measure of education.

Even if we assume suspension of disbelief (thanks to a generous portion of goodwill), the book disappoints. It isn't particularly funny, nor original, and all the points it makes are so unbelievably obvious, its satire is so ham-fisted, that it feels like a book written for ten year olds. Except for the sex in it, of course.

Ben Elton is the writer who is the quickest at noticing some cultural trend, and who pounces on it, writing and publishing a novel while even our short tabloid-fuelled attention span has not wandered away. He wrote Popcorn, about Natural Born Killers and Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino style movies. He wrote Past Mortem, while Friends Reunited had not yet been dethroned by MySpace and Facebook. He wrote House Arrest, while Big Brother was still new and fashionable. You get the drift. Whatever fad starts to get noticed by tabloids, Ben Elton sniffs it out and lambasts it in a novel. Here, he concentrates his fire on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace (I think it's called Facespace in the book), the Jerry Springer generation / experience, and anti-science backlash.

It all feels horrendously frustrating. He creates a world so he can criticise it. He creates characters so we can resent them. Fine, I resent them, but I don't read books just so I can hate all the characters and their world. There needs to be something more - and in this novel, there isn't. The plot is never truely tense, it follows the dystopia template so closely that you sort of know how it's going to end before you've even met all the characters, and the lack of subtlety comes across as shallow and stupid. It's a bit as if someone had taken a Banksy graffiti and turned it into a novel. (Nothing against Banksy - some of his work is funny and satirical and enjoyable - but it's meant for one wall, not for 300 pages)

Having just read a very turgid novel, it was a relief to read Blind Faith as a flowing original view on a futuristic society. It is a great comment on modern paranoia transgressing into a fake plastic society based on the Internet generation hooked on reality TV and dismissive of inoculation as evil. Some great Ben Elton humour throughout and another original offering - Ben's only ever written 1 book that I have not enjoyed to date (Dead Famous)

The world that this book occupies is such a stereotype that its hard not to find it ridiculous. I get the point he's making, that we're not so far from that reality, but the truth is we are a million miles from bishops wearing hotpants!

I felt it was a disappointing re-write of 1984.

I thought in recent novels that Ben Elton has gone off the boil somewhat, so I was pleasantly surprised to find another biting satire on life and the universe.

Mind you getting through the jacket blurb as a bit like wading through porridge. "Ben Elton's dark, savagely comic novel imagines a post-apocalyptic society" and that's enough to put you off for starters. My initial thought was "oh no not another 1984 rip off."

Thankfully Elton stretched the bounds of 1984 with some delicious black humour and a wicked ending that brings no real surprises but certainly makes you think about inclusive and exclusive societies. Basically Elton's world occurs after the second great flood when the world (and in this case London) is celebrity and sexually obsessive - so much so that a decree goes out that everyone is famous. It is very much a 21st century view of the future.

The central character doesn't want to conform and sets out to find like minds - people who can think for themselves as opposed to the current Big Brother generation of vacuous me generation self obsessed youngsters.
We meet Cassius who is employed simply to keep up the government's targets for eliminating age discrimination Then Elton has the following to say about the internet "The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance."

In Elton's grave new world virtually everything that happens to a citizen is shared with everyone else through blogs, vids and other electronic means. Nothing is secret. But of course underneath it all lurks squalor and corruption. The thirst for knowledge backfires. And really anybody who uses the internet could be already part of this frightening concept (myself included).

This book is an enjoyable vision of a strange world that hopefully will never exist but at least it's more entertaining than the usual apocalypse fodder from authors that take themselves far too seriously.

In Ben Elton's best work, there are plenty of laughs, with "the message" happy to co-exist alongside a narrative that has its own life. In "Blind Faith" we are dragged into a world of unremitting grimness, without anything to laugh about at all (despite what one or two other reviewers claim). And, without humour, Ben Elton is a shadow of himself.If we want pontification, we can plug into Gordon Brown. In the absence of a single character about whom we care, the defining events of the book, including the grisly ending, move us not at all, and the "sledgehammer to crack a nut" mentioned in an earlier review is an apt description. There is little here that the average thinking person will not already have considered themselves, if distorted to a grotesque level. From the first few pages, I had the sinking feeling that this was likeley to become a moralising bore, and nothing changed my view as the book progressed. Come on, Ben, get the funny lines out and do what you do best again.

In Blind Faith, Ben Elton describes a dystopian future generated from extrapolating the worst aspects of modern life. He creates a world that becomes darker and bleaker as the impacts of anti-privacy laws, religious fundamentalism and the "me me me" culture are taken to the extreme. All astute commentary on modern life, but the delivery fails to match the rhetoric.

A rant against the banality of modern life surely deserves a delivery mechanism that aspires to greatness. This book works like an Elton stand-up sketch ... slow humorous beginning, increasing pace, culminating in manic rant against the horrors of the current system. Great (well OK) for stand-up, but hardly the basis for a novel.

Essentially, this novel rants against the dumbing down of modern life by taking 1984 and dumbing it down for modern life. The re-relling of this classic is barely disguised, and cannot claim to be improved by simplifying, shortening and updating with 21st century technology. Leave alone - read 1984 or Player Piano instead.

First of all, if you are expecting comedic writing, or laugh out loud moments, you will be disappointed. The book works as a satire - a slight exaggeration of social developments of say the last 15 years - and as such it might at best produce a wry grin at the mastery of it, or thoughtfulness about where it is all going.

Still, that does not detract from the book's other qualities. Ben Elton paints a pretty damning picture of today's society - transported about 80 or so years ahead in time, into a fictional, post ice cap melting England, characterised by a 1984 meets Jerry Springer / Ricky Lake meets Big Brother (not the 1984 variety) meets Facebook meets self help guru and televangelism. All this combined with a complete breakdown of public services and transport, as well as practically disappearing medical services. Basically a sinking down to the lowest common denominator, to an existence intellectually not much above that of Middle Ages.

In a way the author is holding up a mirror to today's society (and the picture is far from pretty), at the same time exaggerating somewhat for effect and placing it sufficiently out of the here and now so as not to antagonise too many readers. Shockingly, reading something like Wrong: Why Experts* Keep Failing Us-And How to Know When Not to Trust Them: Scientists, Finance Wizards, Doctors, Relationship Gurus, Celebrity Ceos, demonstrates that Elton is much closer to the truth than one would at first assume.

Without giving too much away, the book is rather dark (especially so towards the end) and while a glimmer of hope is shown just before the end, this is not a feel good book. What it does, though is celebrate privacy, thought, mental exertion and it certainly is an ode to reading - a deliverance from many of the ills described. The fact that it can also be just an escape mechanism, not changing much out there in the real world is also a theme aluded to.

I did not give it the full five stars due to the sometimes clunky writing and a slightly jerky timeline progression (not really necessary or adding to the story in my opinion). On top of the ending is very much predictable, even if there are twists and turns just before.

The release of the latest Ben Elton is always an eagerly awaited event in our house. And, as this book tackles some of my own pet hates, religion and the CCTV society, I was really looking forward to this. However it was a bit of a letdown.

One of Elton's strengths has always been his originality. This seems to have deserted him here. It felt very much like a cross between 1984 and Logan's Run with more swearing and black humour. I found the characters unengaging and the whole thing a little bland, not as replete with the visceral wit as his past works.

Having said that, it was an OK read and engaging enough that I managed to finish it. It just didn't hit the same heights as previous works. I'd recommend you go to `Dead Famous' or `First Casualty' instead.