Book review #3 The Book of Dave

Will Self: The Book of Dave

Will Self is one of my favorite authors. Other then being British (hate them) he has written some of the more disturbing and alienated prose in modern english ficition...at least fiction that was not scribbled on subway or bathroom walls or spray painted on rail cars. His book of short stories, “The Quantity Theory of Insanity” was one of the best collections I ever read and he has recently visited such classic themes as a planet of the apes “Great Apes” and the picture of Dorian Gray, “Dorian.” He is dark, he is twisted. I like him.

The new book is “The Book of Dave.” It is really hard and really annoying to read...but totally worth it. Without giving too much away Dave is a modern english cabby who mentally falls apart after having a child with a model and marrying her. He gets divorced and loses visitation rights to his child and goes into a slow, mentally ill rage that burns through the book. he also joins a fathers rights group that although he loathes it...shapes and reinforces some of his demented views regarding marriage and child rearing.

Amid all the craziness and injustices he writes his own "book' in a prozhac induced rage and has the pages engraved on steel plates which he buries in his ex wifes yard for his son Carl to find....at some time in the future. The awkward part is that somewhere between that and some other time...the apocalypse comes. The book switches back and forth between Dave in England...and 500 years later where his “book” is the center of modern religion and his crazy screeds regarding relationships between men and women are now governing. They are conservative. They are inflexible. The "book" of Dave is their Bibble or Koran and there are liturgical references toeverything related to being a cabby and all believers are "fares." Their liturgy is all the "points and runs" of the various routes to get from one place to another in London and these are chanted at all religious observances.

Most of the future part of the book takes place on the island of Ham where they are ruled or governed by a religious "Driver" who decrees how they live their life in day to day observance of faith which includes all manner of sexual seperation later augmented with the rape and physical abuse of woman. The people of Ham "Hamsters" are fairly innocent sheeplike people who live with strange creatures called motos which we are told are vaguely human though much larger and have the functional intelligence of two year olds. It is all...very odd. The relationship between Hamsters and their Motos is one of caqring codependence which culminates in the religious slaughter and rendering of the Moto.

It is also annoying because Self in his typical “look no hands,” “I can write anything I want and it is brilliant” style, he invents his own phonetic but incredibly hard to read language that they speak post apocalypse. It took about 200 pages before I could get into the rhythm of the book. It is really difficult to read and tiring but when I got into it...i thought it was like all of his stuff. Brilliant and troubling. If you are religious...and I am...the book is a harsh indictment of all the doctrine that governs my faith. It does not bother me but...it does make you examine your faith and why you believe all the unbelievable things that faith requires.

He never answers a lot of questions (or perhaps I could not read it closely enough to decipher all the clues) basic questions that hound the simple minded diner. What was the apocalypse for example. Why did people in the future have a lot the same paternal names as the present day characters? Is there a God? He never gets to a lot of that stuff and in the end it is a great critique of religion and society and a great overview of the main characters life taking us through agony and heartbreak and coming to a little peace in a very tumultuous life. It is not Self's best work but it is hard to fault a guy who is this good.
7 1/2 Sliders out of 10.




BACK OF WILL SELF'S HEAD