Monday, September 02, 2013

Review: My Idea of Fun


My Idea of Fun
My Idea of Fun by Will Self

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Smug, self-satisfied, pretentious twaddle from a cutting-edge writer fearlessly treading unspoiled ground covered twenty years previously by the likes of Robert Bloch and Joyce Carol Oates. Between the high-handed purple prose; long winding passages saying nothing really but jammed in for the sole purpose of demonstrating the breadth of Self's vocabulary; and a plot so minor it might have filled a Richard Matheson short story on a bad day, this is a Jericho's trumpet of nothingness. Tedious and frustrating in equal measure, even the gleeful shock value of Self's "Oh, I'm so naughty" moments come across as little more than a small boy jumping in puddles to upset his parents. Tiresome. DNF.



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1 comment:

Adam Browne said...

yes, agreed; he can't write novels - only his essays and shorts are worth reading - and then only his early ones