I got this ages ago, and frankly I should have read it a heck of a lot quicker than I did. I had a lot of work to do in the last six weeks or so what with my dissertation and portfolio of essays being handed in for the end of term, which obviously hindered my reading time. Also, the book was fairly difficult to slog through, being partly set in the future and with much of the dialogue being written in dialect that has evolved from Cockney. There was a glossary of terms at the back! There's also a lot of jumping back and forth between lots of different time zones. It's not a particularly easy read (and I consider myself a very strong reader), but it's complexity is rewarding.
The book concerns Dave, a racist, sexist, foul-mouthed cabbie who loses his son in a messy divorce. In a mania, he writes his confused ramblings in a book and buries it in his son's garden. Hundreds of years later, after flood waters have reduced England to a near medieval state, his book is discovered, mistaken for holy scripture and forms the basis of a repressive, misogynist religion. The narrative switches between Dave in the twentieth and early twenty-first century and the characters of Symun, Carl and Antone in the far distant future.
The book is incredibly inventive and darkly humorous. There are many interesting themes, though the predominant ones are the role of religion in society and the changing face of father-son relationships in modern families.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, despite my initial struggle to get into it (kind of like how 'Trainspotting' takes a chapter or so to get into the dialect, though this takes longer). I'll definitely be reading more Will Self in the future and I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a big, inventive novel and Swift-ian satire.
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