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Incompetence

This is from one of the chaps that wrote Red Dwarf and is about a United States of Europe where incompetence has flourished thanks to a total lack of any discrimination.

This book reminded me of two others: The Salmon of Doubt and Nineteen Eighty-Four. It reminded me of Adams' last work in the style of its humour and of Orwell's masterpiece in the way it makes you, when you finish the last page, say to yourself "that's how the world could end up".

While I don't think it's as funny as anything of Douglas Adams' (it understandably owes a large debt to Red Dwarf, which was always decidedly patchy) and it certainly isn't anything like as important as Nineteen Eighty-Four (although I think it does score some decent satirical hits) I know that there are much much worse things that you could be reading (Second Wind by Dick Francis, for example).

It is, perhaps, worth buying just for the scene in which Harry Salt tries to buy a train ticket: easily the funniest thing I've read in ages (although I have been reading about people going insane at sea and freezing to death in tents, so that might not be much of indication).

In fact, I think it's more like Red Dwarf than I first thought: mostly average, occasionally bad, but with enough hilarious moments to redeem it. Yes indeed. Go out and borrow it one day.

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Basil Fawlty with Touretts

My Favourite character was the police man, he was a fowled mouthed Basil Fawlty, in a permenant sarcastic rage, and frequently says how he was much much worse before his anger management. The train ticket moment is definitly one of the best, there are some dry patches to the book, but its carried by the bourocratic background on which it is set, and the wonderful little touches that are put in every scene, and the thriller plot, which is largely irrelevent but keeps our character on the move.

The scene where he gets his car clamped by a man who did it on purpose, knowing that procedure of getting the car unclamped was one that would send a new born baby grey had me snorting accidentally on the bus. As did the scene where he had to put a corpse at the wheel of his car so he could jump out. It's very deeply written, and it takes Harry three whole chapters from leaping onto a moving train to actually not getting inside the train, and eventually moving under it until it happens to stop at a station, and he can make his bedraggled way to first class. The descriptions are very Adams, but that was only because Adams was the first write angrily, and in a very british mannor about doors, tables and unhelpful Station attendemts. Grant still manages to carve his own style into the plot.

Salmon of doubt no, 1984, yes a bit, i was more reminded of the Dirk Gently books. A wonderful and funny book that only really begins to faulter, like most comedies, at the end when the plot needs to be tied up.

By Anonymous at Thu, 17/03/2005 - 14:11 | login to post comments