Friday 22 July 2011

The Book of Dave - Will Self

This is a bizarre, dark and surreal novel whose plot switches between a post-apocalyptic society in which the demented ramblings of a London cab-driver have been adopted as the guiding principles for a new religion, and the disturbed life of the cabbie Dave himself. Despite the linguistic trickery of the "mokni" dialect (which is pretty funny in places) it is very readable and absorbing, but it left me somewhat confused as to what it was that I'd just read - for most of the book it is clear that the Book was a delusional mistake, and its use as the basis of a divisive and harsh social order is a tragedy, but occasionally there are flashes which appear genuinely prophetic. In particular, I found this observation from Dave very jarring, as it is such a disturbingly accurate description of the genetically engineered "moto" that appear in the future portions of the book:
"The child hadn't been a part of him at all - he was from another species, half human, half something else. He had been engineered only to be loved and then sacrificed, his corpse rendered down for whatever psychic balm it might provide."

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