Normally, I only read horror novels in October, but this was my book group read, and I did start it in September. I finished it in the early hours of Saturday morning just gone so it took a while to read.
This book really stretches the limits of the boundaries between what's good writing and what's a fun read. If you're one of those readers who insists on having a likeable protagonist, don't even bother with this.
The book follows John Self, a misogynistic, alcoholic. drug addicted asshole. He's been tasked with directing a film in Hollywood off the back of some controversial adverts he made in Britain. He spends the book flying back and forth between London and New York, spending more and more money, drinking, jerking off, reading porn and mistreating women.
He's quite simply one of the most repulsive narrators of any book I've ever read.
The brilliance of the book is in the act of literary ventriloquism that puts us so firmly in his headspace. That headspace isn't somewhere that any sane person wants to be, but it's kind of addictive after a while. One of his few saving graces is that he's entirely self-aware of his faults is too weak to do anything about them without some outside agency. His weakness is also something he is keenly aware of.
The subtitle of the book is "A Suicide Note" so we know it's not going to go to a happy place at the end. Initially the situation seems quite unbelievable- why would anyone give this disaster of a man the responsibility, he's been given? And then the pieces start to slip into place as to what is actually happening. From that point on, I fhought it was compulsive reading, waiting for the fall that was looming ever closer.
The gradual reveal of the plot, told in a very close up first person through the eyes of someone who can't actually see it for himself is quite brilliant in my humble opinion.
It's a difficult read. I won't deny that. I was the only member of the book group that finished it. his narrative voice was too much for the rest of the group and I understand completely why they didn't finish. I found it very funny though. The humour is as black as it's possible to get before it turns into something entirely different, so my love of dark fiction probably helped me get through it.
There are bon mots galore in here if you go looking for them. One of my favorites was where he describes a body builder he sees in the street as "some track suited miracle of push-ups and alfalfa".
Frequently we're given his version of events and left to work out for ourselves how it looked to the rest of the world around him. The disconnect between his view and reality is both jarring and hilarious in equal measures.
Your mileage may vary on whether the inclusion of a writer with a very familiar name as a central character in the story is amusing or pretentious twaddle.
It's broad satire on a particular subset of society in the 80s and I would like to hope they're consigned to history. But I look at modern day reports that the Bullingdon club still exists and is still up to its old tricks and I realise that these people might well be running the country at the moment... Please excuse the political digression.
It's a difficult book to love but an easy one to admire. I think it repays the effort required to read it in absolute spades. If you like a challenging read, go for it. I don't blame you if you fail, but please, push through with it. You might even find yourself feeling sorry for him by the end of the book as Amis manages to somewhat humanise this monster of a narrator.
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