Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk

Nothing to do with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - thank god.

Mother's Milk is part 4 of a set of books, known as Patrick Melrose series (the precursors to this being Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope) and is largely autobiographical in some respects (although, it is unclear what aspects are based on true life and those that are fiction.) Focusing on 4 summers in August, Mother's Milk follows the ups and downs of Melrose and his family from the viewpoints of several characters, jumping from Patrick, to his two young sons and also his wife.

I was surprised that I really enjoyed this book. Not having read any or heard of Edward St. Aubyn before (it was selected for our club from an outside source) it wasn't exactly what I expected, but the content actually exceeded my expectations, which is always a bonus when you go in half blind. Aubyn's style is incredibly witty - After the first 2 pages I was laughing and reading passages out to people. The character of Patrick Melrose is a slightly bitter, sarcastic, world-weary individual, who is attempting to be a better parent than his actual parents, but still seems to be suffering. his mother is painted in a rather unfavourable light (on her deathbed, losing her mind, content to bequeath her wealth to a cult), whilst Partrick becomes embroiled in an affair with an old school sweetheart so he can feel...well, something.

He's jealous of his wife and her relationship with his youngest son. Although he loves them, it appears he feels his children have taken his wife away as she no longer has the time to be intimate with Patrick, causing a rift. (slight Oedipus-tendencies at work, all created by Patrick overacting)

Patrick might come across as the villain of the piece (he's rather more a scallywag, and a rogue), but as someone pointed out, his wife is just as much to blame for not even addressing the situation - she fully admits to herself that she knows of his adultery but lets him carry on. It's unclear how miserable she feels about this however. It could be a simple matter of her letting Patrick 'get it out of his system' so to speak, which seems an odd and implausible attitude for someone who's supposed to be a loving relationship with him. Although, the reason for the affair stems from the fact they aren't really in a relationship - only by name.

On to more humourous matters, the characters of Thomas and Robert are fantastic. They have the comic timing and styles of the children from Outnumbered - not so much asking who would win in a fight between a polar bear and Jesus, but more the quick wit and eccentricities of Karen's character and the oddball moments of Ben's.

Although, the children's humour did seem quite advanced for their ages, which was a slight concern. I somehow doubt a four-year old could do such an accurate impression of their babysitter's eccentric mannerisms.

An enjoyable book, wonderful writing style and sharp wit. Be interesting to read the others in the series, although from what I read in the notes in the back of my copy, the eariler books focused on a much darker aspect of Melrose's life.

Urban Waite – The Terror of Living

What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?

 The Terror of Living by Urban Waite is an action thriller set in the mountains between Canada and Washington State. The set up is a familiar one, in fact, fans of Cormac McCarthy will get a real kick out of this. Whilst the style isn’t quite in the same league as McCarthy’s stark, poetic prose; Waite delivers a taunt, edgy and bloody tale of ‘good people who get involved in bad things’ which seems to be a running theme of the book. Ex-con Phil Hunt supplements is scarce income by dabbling in some drug running. When the deal goes south (he’s apprehended in the mountains by Deputy Sheriff Bobby Drake) he scarpers, leaving the drugs, his nameless accomplice and some very pissed off dealers who decide a clean-up operation is needed to not only cover their tracks, but retrieve the lost merchandise.

I really enjoyed this book. In fact, I can pinpoint the exact point when I knew this would be the book for me. It’s when someone has their neck snapped. Brutality prevails in grasping my attention, and boy, did this get my attention. Although, you can tell what characters Waite enjoyed writing about and what characters he didn’t. The character of Grady for example, is a writer’s joy to create. He’s a complete psychopath. A monster. A dragon. A portal into a world of chaos. His obsession with knives, his compulsive need to destroy everything he encounters – the maddening insight into his mind. It’s an incredibly complex and well-written character, and one I actually cheered for. Likewise, so is Hunt – a man just trying to do the right thing, dogged by a shady past, but determined to make amends anyway he can. He’s an everyman, but his persistent need to survive, the love for his wife drives him and he becomes the one you root for, more so that Drake, who to all intensive purposes looks like Officer Dibble.

Drake however, is a rather poor and ineffectual character – but perhaps this is deliberate. He, as well as Driscoll (FBI agent called in to protect Drake and also in pursuit of Hunt) are always one step behind Hunt and Grady. They are ineffectual – contributing dumb “I told you so’s” towards proceedings. Drake never feels like he’s in charge; although whilst reading I did envisage a Raylan Givens quality towards him, he never had that attitude or instinct, rather the look and not much else. I blame the hat personally, which was practically a supporting character, much like Grady’s rifle.

The action does jump about a fair bit – we see through the eyes of a multitude of other characters, including the grim-Vietnamese who are simply there as hired goons who you would not want to meet on a dark night, not to mention someone only known as ‘The Lawyer’ who’s fate is a grisly “and now I must scream” moment.

Would I read anything by Waite again? Most definitely; his style is incredibly taunt and concise – the level of detail, the skill in which he paints this picture in your head of the surroundings, the violence, the terror is something that pulled me in. Yes, there are similarities to No Country For Old Men; he even thanks McCarthy and that book in the notes at the end – but for me, this was an exciting, engaging and bloody thriller that I strongly recommend.

It’s a simple cat and mouse story all in all; with perhaps several more cats pursuing the mouse. And these cats have guns and knives and the mouse has a shotgun.

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451



Gettin' hot in herre.

"Burn, burn yes you're gonna burn." - Zack de la Rocha.

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystophian novel by the American author, Ray Bradbury. In this startling vision of the future, reading is forbidden and fireman start fires (as opposed to putting them out) and burn all reading material. The main protagonist, is a fireman named Guy Montag - a conflicted soul who starts to question the very nature of the fireman's job and reason for destroying books and the written word. He strikes up a friendship with a young woman called Clarisse McClellan, who also seems to question things rather than accepting them and harbours an interest in nature. Mildred is Montag's wife, a depressive, tv addict, trapped without a care in the shallow oppressive society that the bookless universe has become. Other characters include Beatty, the antagonistic and creepy fire-chief and Faber, a former English professor, plagued by regret and guilt for not defending books at the time motions were being made to ban them.

-

Ross

There’s nothing like a good dystopian thriller to get the blood boiling, or should I say, books burning to a fragile, papery crisp. Fahrenheit 451 is the kind of book that leaves the taste of ashes in your mouth. The outlawing of books and the resulting acceptance by the majority of characters displayed in Bradbury’s tale is disturbing to say the least. Those that rebel against this the faceless government and the firemen are seen as the enemy – the social outcasts of a society dominated by fear. In fact, the government is shown to be the one that is plagued by fear – fear of the threat of books allowing independent thought in people – fear of questioning the totalitarian scheme that has been created – fear of the human race.

 Bradbury states that the book isn’t about censorship, but is rather an attack on television and how it destroys the interest in reading literature. In Bradbury’s world, television appears in the form of a Parlour – simply a wall onto which programmes are displayed constantly; possibly at the speed an inane quality they are now.

The hero, Guy Montag – starts as a fireman, one who is conflicted and doubts his profession after meeting a like-minded and carefree soul in the form of Clarisse McClellan. After witnessing a woman self-immolate due to her love for books, Montag falls apart. This is where the story takes a drastic dive into the realms of even deeper fear and paranoia. Subtlety, you can see where these already lie – his wife attempts overdoses, yet doesn’t remember in the morning; the reveal that Montag has been hording books for months, possibly years – the tortured, alas poor villain of Beatty.

There’s a futility that the Government has created here. There is now no excitement; there is simply just existing, sat in front of the Parlour and gradually degrading. The only thrill seems to be death – hence Mildred (Montag’s wife) supposed cries for attention; also Beatty, who it subtlety implies was a big reader and opposed to the government, but something turned him into a fireman and his parts in the book are the most interesting. He’s a mystery – a man so obviously tortured by what we can’t see (extensive library possibly?) that he suicides by cop in the second section of the book. You could argue that those who have accepted and succumbed to the Parlour and the oppressive regime are in fact, dead. Only those in support of books are alive. Montag being someone who was ‘reborn’ after his meeting with Clarisse; whereas Beatty comes across as someone who lost faith – who fell apart perhaps due to fear and sided with the government. Beatty’s actions as a fireman could be someway of repenting for his possible past love of books – his eventual death is him being finally free of a world that is so corrupted and consumed by fear.

The Walking Dead Comics: Open-Ended Twaddle or Compelling Chaos?

The Walking Dead is an apocalyptic zombie-survival series created by Robert Kirkman, with illustrations provided by Tony Moore and then later Charlie Adlard. Instead of focusing primarily on the zombies, the comic follows the lives of Rick Grimes and his family, alongside a host of other characters, who all seem to have one goal – survival, whatever the cost. The series is a mixture of disturbing and quite graphic horror, spliced with black humour and some fairly tender moments.

Why I hate The Walking Dead - Pete Hindle

Left: You thought the world would never end? You’ve got Egg all over your face now!

Specifically, the reason I hate The Walking Dead is it’s ongoing, open-ended story.

When I first heard of it, I was intrigued. But, as the trade paperbacks kept coming out - roughly twice a year^[1] - I lost interest. A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and up until zombies shuffled off our screens and into other media forms, all zombie stories had an end.

I guess it was computer games that started it. Resident Evil’s early games seemed so cool, letting us blast our way through the undead. It was a type of zombie story that went beyond the classic movies, letting us experience the terror of the undead rather than a story with wooden actors and bad make-up. But games are expensive to make, and by the time they had produced number four in the series you knew that the mysteries of the Umbrella Corporation would never be solved.

In a computer game, returning to the same scenario is part of the mechanism of play^[2]. In storytelling, the narrative must come to an end. Repeating the scenario is derivative, or dull, because the story becomes worn out. Soap operas struggle to keep their viewers interested as they repeat the same plotlines - secret affairs, petty lies, and addictions happen with depressing regularity to their characters, without a final end ever coming to any of the overlapping stories.

In the television show based on “The Walking Dead”, the end of the first season is marked by the survivors getting secret information from scientists (shortly before a massive explosion signals the end of the season). This is different from the comic plot line, because the people watching the six hour-long episodes would need to know that there was some reason for them to keep watching. That there would be a point to wading through the grim realities of a world destroyed and under siege from zombies.

The comic book has different fans. Those fans pay money to see fictional characters stressed to the limits of their endurance - and beyond, because they want to see themselves reflected in the failings of the characters. Zombies have always been seen as an allegory of mass humanity. Initially, Romero’s movie zombies were symbols of 1960’s conformity^[3], so perhaps the failure of The Walking Dead’s characters to survive unscathed reassures the fans when they give up their individuality to consume capitalist goods. Like comic books.

Whats the matter? Too political for you? Hey, zombies are always political. They’re the original silent majority, with their earliest incarnations reflecting a fear of black slaves taking over - making white people their slaves via voodoo^[4]. These days, we’re all the slaves of an international conspiracy to enslave us via finance^[5].

The reason I hate The Walking Dead is because it’s an unending story of failure, despair, and compromise. It plays with it’s readers emotions by offering hope, but inevitably only rewards them with a darker, less survivable scenario. By refusing to call an end to it’s plot, the comic has become a version of Eastenders with the shambling undead instead of the Mitchells,

Besides, zombies? Haven't they been done to death?

---

^[1] Currently we are up to volume 13, “Too Far Gone”. Other cheery titles include “Made to suffer” and “This Sorrowful Life”.

^[2] For more information than you could ever possibly want to know about computer game mechanics, see http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_design.php?page=1

^[3] The Village Voice calls this “middle america at war” http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-01-07/film/the-dead-zones/ - so it’s not just me. If you want, you can google it yourself to find an academic text saying something similar.

^[4] See the original zombie movie, White Zombie, at http://www.archive.org/details/white_zombie. Also of note is the wikipedia entry for this man, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvius_Narcisse who is famous for “being a zombie”.

^[5] Just ask anybody from Iceland, Ireland, Greece, or Portugal. 

Ross - Case for the shambling defence.

I understand the criticism levelled at The Walking Dead for its open-ended story. I understand the need for a story to have a beginning, middle and an end. The thing about The Walking Dead is, it’s a different kind of story – it’s a different kind of take on the zombie genre. It’s not something that the creator, Robert Kirkman wants to be like “every other zombie movie/story/event” – he wants it played out in a way that has the reader constantly on edge. He wants the reader to be in an almost constant state of trepidation about what’s over the next page.

To put it bluntly, Kirkman is a complete bastard. He wants the reader to feel the pain, the sorrow, the distress that he’s putting his characters through and the relentless hardships they’re facing. Sure, it makes for a depressing comic – but hello? It’s a zombie comic; it’s not going to be all sunshine, daises and unicorns prancing past outstretched, rotting limbs. There’s been places were Kirkman could have cut the comic and said “I’m done, that’s the end” – the siege at the prison which results in a huge death toll on nearly all the secondary (and a couple of important main) characters. Here, Kirkman could have quite easily snuffed out Rick and Carl Grimes, along with Andrea, Glen, Dale and Michonne; but he chose not to....why? Well, the popularity of the comic for one thing, plus he wasn’t ready to end it there. Unfinished business seems to be a recurring theme of The Walking Dead, it bleeds a wanting resolve for all the adversity the characters are put through and in that sense, it’s hard to not want them to continue, no matter how bad it gets.

In the way that Kirkman has made the series so opposite to other comic series’, he’s also made it the same. What I mean is the argument that the story is too open-ended could be said for almost every superhero comic in the DC and Marvel universe. They’ve not stopped have they? There are umpteen different variations and different universes to contend with; which suddenly make The Walking Dead series seem like a lightweight in comparison.

The argument that it’s nothing more than “a soap opera with zombies” is somewhat flawed as you could say that about any comic series really. “Oh this is like Eastenders, except Batman is in it.” Sure, Kirkman is chucking in new characters at an alarming rate, but he’s not letting it get stale like a soap opera – there’s always a new twist, a new element to encounter. He’s keeping it exciting and tense – having Eugene as a scientist who supposedly knows the cause of the zombie plague, the ultimate but mysterious badass that is Abraham, the real motive of the people in the Alexandria Safe Zone and is the real question: is Davidson still alive? Plus, I reckon Spiderman whined more than Rick Grimes ever did and Spiderman got to bang Mary-Jane, Gwen Stacey and had a right hand.

I think with The Walking Dead, you’re getting a comic that perhaps is stringing out its conclusion, but it’s one where the payoff could go either way, with Kirkman weighing heavily on the “there’s going to be tears” side of things. In some ways, it’s refreshing that this isn’t just another case of “here’s some character build, bad stuff, bad stuff, OH LOOK DEUS EX MECHNICA happy ending tra la la.” This isn’t going to happen; I can’t see Kirkman wanting this to happen – what we have is a lot of fear and as Pete suggested, “failing distilled into false hope”, but this is what makes the comic exciting in that respect – it’s not your typical storyline is it?

The latest installment of The Walking Dead comic book series is out now, as is the dvd of the first series. 

Dan Wells - I Am Not A Serial Killer

People like me. You'll never see us coming.

Caution! Gory content – strong stomach essential.

'I Am Not A Serial Killer' is a YA book about a 15 year old boy called John Wayne Cleaver – a kid that possesses a name that will put you on edge. He works in the family mortuary with his mum and aunt – his dad is absent and John….he has issues – some big ones. Not a subscription to White Dwarf, more what his therapist classes as ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’ and a ‘monster’ that lives inside of him. He has a set of rules to keep ‘the monster’ in check in order to be a normal kid, despite his obvious defects of being a sociopath. It gets more sinister. Someone or something is stalking and killing people in John’s hometown of Clayton. On the first page someone has already had their intestines on display and the gruesome acts get progressively worse as the book progresses.

Ross

As book titles go, it’s a sure fire winner. Not only does it standout as a memorable, morbid statement, the cover of ‘I Am Not A Serial Killer’ is a real eye catcher. Using black, white and lots of red, it bleeds a sinister corruption. The clawed scratch marks above the title, the spidery, angry lettering that adorns both the front and back make it a book that you will know doubt pick up and muse over if you spied it in a book shop.

I really enjoyed this book; Dan Wells has the ability to tell an engaging tale with the kind of descriptive hooks that I can’t get enough of. Like James Herbert, the horror is suitably gruesome and for a YA book, fairly explicit. People are eviscerated; their insides become their outsides, limbs hacked off here and there – it’s a rush, an adrenalin fuelled surge of old-school horror seen through the eyes of a 15 year old sociopath. It strongly reminded me of an old horror film from the early 80s. It edged on the side of Silver Bullet (sans kid in wheelchair and Gary Busey) and substituted it for a boy obsessed with serial killers and a therapist ‘just trying to do the right thing.’ There is a sense of a final showdown conclusion looming at the end of almost every chapter; with Cleaver almost constantly vowing to find the scourge of Clayton and put it down once and for all. Big Damn Heroes trope? You bet – although Cleaver, leans on the side of anti-hero – he’s not without his demons, or ‘monster’ if you will. Several points in the book he comes across as a thoroughly disturbing child – he’s consumed at least twice by the ‘monster’ which nearly ends in tragedy for two people, both of who are close to him in different ways. He also stalks a girl in his class that he is interested in:

“She’s (Brooke, the girl in question) great, I thought. She has a birthday coming up, and I found the complete guest list for her slumber party crumpled up in the family’s garbage can. She likes horses, manga and 80’s music, and she’s always just late enough for the school bus that she has to run to catch up. I know her class schedule, her GPA, her social security number and the password to her gmail account.”

I quite liked the creepiness and black humour of this inner monologue answer to his mum’s innocent question of how Brooke was. Cleaver again, edges on that side of being the mysterious weirdo who one minute buys you flowers and takes you out to dinner but then starts the conversation with “so, how would you like to see my collection of shrunken heads?” There’s one superb scene where he owns one of his classroom tormentors with a creepy, Patrick Bateman-esque put down that unfortunately backfires in killing the moment with Brooke, who happens to overhear the conversation.

Not wanting to give too much away, there is a specific moment in the book where a big genre shift takes place - it's not entirely unexpected, but it alters the tone of the book from a sinister mystery, to a 'hunt the demon' with the gore intensifying and Cleaver conjuring up his own theories about the killer, which are proved to be disturbingly accurate. 

Despite Cleaver's flawed and somewhat bizarre personality, it's difficult not to root for him - just like Bundy, he has that charm coupled with this deadpan delivery that, even if the 'monster' did break loose, you'd still cheer for him, because let's face it, the bad guys are always more fun, right? 

Annabel Pitcher - My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece

Even Spider-man needs a bit of help sometimes.

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher has a strange balance between quite accidental black humour and tragedy. The storyteller is 10 year old Jamie Matthews, who has moved to the Lake District with his father, his sister Jasmine and his cat Roger. Five years ago, Jasmine’s twin sister Rose, was killed in an explosion, orchestrated by terrorists. As such, the father has never quite come to terms with the loss of Rose and is split from their mother. Both grieving in their own ways, whilst Jamie struggles to fit in surrounded by bullies, unsympathetic teachers and neglect from his father. Luckily, his sister Jasmine stands by him, as does a Muslim girl, Sunya, causing the two to strike up a friendship.

Characters:

Jamie – the narrator, 10 years old, avid spider-man fan, a curious and slightly bewildered child who seems to lack the attention he needs from the deadbeat dad and the absent mum.

Jasmine – the hero of the story – looks after Jamie, pretty much runs the household due to the dad’s drinking and grief. Dyes her hair bright pink so as to be distinguished from her dead sister.

Dad – alcoholic, but never violent to his kids – just consumed by sorrow. Tries, but is essentially a nervous wreck. Hates Muslims, blaming all of them for the death of his daughter Rose.

Mum – worse than dad; absent for a good part of the story, not a sympathetic character or one to warm to really.

Sunya – a sweet and slightly mischievous Muslim girl who becomes friends with Jamie. One of the most interesting characters, thick-skinned and reliable; cares a lot for Jamie and shares similar characteristics of Jasmine.

Ross

For a a book with not the cheeriest of subject matters, (a broken family reeling from the events of a bombing that left one of their number dead) I actually found My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece a sweet, absorbing and often, an unintentionally funny read.I think it’s mainly due to the narrator being a 10 year old boy. If it had been from the point of view of the mother or the father than I imagine I would have put the book down after 10 pages and not gone back to it.

The jacket sleeve states that “this is his (Jamie’s) story, an unflinchingly real yet heart-warming account of a young boy’s struggle to make sense of the loss that tore his family apart.” – Now, alarm bells might ring, yes it does sound like one of those true story/grief books that I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot barge pole, but there’s something quite naïve and warm about Pitcher’s style and the fact it’s all detailed from this viewpoint of confused adolescence.

I should state, I got more laughs out of this book than I got out of the ‘uproariously funny’ Short History of Tractors In Ukrainian. Why? Because the writing was about a million times better, the humour – quite subtle and clever in the style of Outnumbered, e.g.

 Mrs Farmer: “god is watching us all the time… even when we think we are alone, he can see what we are doing.”

Jamie (inner monologue): I thought about being on the toilet and hoped this wasn’t true.

Also:

Jamie (inner monologue): whilst on a trip to the beach in an attempt to scatter Rose’s ashes – We were squashed in the back. Rose had the front seat. Dad even put a seatbelt around the urn but forgot to tell me to do mine.

Sometimes childish:

During the creation of a nativity scene during an Ofsted inspection, baby Jesus, Joseph and Mary all have unexpected additions to their clay selves. One of the last lines in the chapter also ends with “thank you for giving baby Jesus a dickhead.”

I felt a lot of sympathy for Jamie. My impression in the story is that he never really knew his sister Rose as well as Jas and so to have her not in his life anymore, it didn’t affect him as much as it did the other members of the family. I feel he was very hard done by; constantly getting the shitty end of the stick on everything – whether this is a combination of his oddball quirks, the divide between his parents who seem so consumed in their own private grief that they fail to pay attention to others around them, or due to jerks like Daniel at school. I think if Jas hadn’t been there, the story would have been a lot darker – she was the ray of light for Jamie. She was the one he could turn to, she basically acted as more of mother to him than their actual mum, who’s presence in the book angered me when she finally appeared. Jas is the hero of the book; it’s her that cares for and looks after Jamie – the Christmas presents, the sacrifices and brave decisions she makes for him. Sunya fits a similar trope – she sees Jamie as the troubled, tortured outsider and tries to bond with him. Due to Jamie’s dad’s views on Muslims, Jamie feels like a traitor to his dead sister and his dad and at times, his behaviour towards Sunya is bizarre, rude and quite coarse. Her persistent and dogged attitude though, means she stands by him. 

I feel in some ways, this books isn’t just about seeing grief from another view point – it’s also about friendship and the strains that friendship goes through in it’s initial creation and the things that do hold two people together and the obstacles they have to overcome in order for that friendship to work.

I’m trying not to throw too many spoilers in; basically, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is something I seriously recommend. The subject matter is handled expertly, with a thoughtful, often juvenile attitude shining through, lightening the mood of a book that some might expect to be darker. Is their a happy ending? There’s an ending, that’s all I’m going to say. However, Pitcher seems to have gone to the same school of making the character(s) suffer as Patrick Ness, but only attended the first few classes, as opposed to Ness and his degree in “ramping the pain to 11.” The bleaker moments, are outweighed by fitting conclusions and several significant turning points that bring certain characters (such as the dad) out of a one-dimensional shell and prove that they do have some spark and life in them. I think there is a lot of love in this book awaiting to be opened but is only freed through closure and the growing of everyone involved.

It would be interesting to see what a 10 year old thinks of this book.

John Niven - Kill Your Friends

"The nature of show business means that people within the business feel that if someone else fails, they move up a notch." - Tom Arnold.

"You can't spell 'star' without A and R." - Ronnie Vanucci

Kill Your Friends by John Niven is a book about greed, fuelled by conscious desire to stab your nearest rival in the back (or smash their head in with a baseball bat after feeding them insane quantities of coke and valium) in order to gain the ultimate prize - to be the one on top of the pile. It's a snapshot of the life of Steve Stelfox, an A&R man for an unnamed music company and his various day-to-day dealings, sufferings and insane hedonism. The book is laced with black humour, large amounts of profanity and drug taking. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find a page that doesn't feature Stelfox or one of his odious comrades snorting something. 


Ross

Kill Your Friends is one of the funniest books I have read in a long, long time. Niven's writing is bitter, caustic and roars with a fiery hate - I couldn't help but find it anything but hilarious. The book is divided into 12 chapters, each with a short scathing blurb on the current musical climate. For instance, April’s reads: “R.Kelly is no. 1 for a fucking month….whispers start to circulate that the new Radiohead LP is off its tits – an unlistenable prog-rock nightmare.” These short pieces are laden with hype and pretension – label bosses blithering about certain bands being around “longer than 18 months”; certain acts being “retro and contemporary” (Jimmy Fucking Ray, I ask you) and my favourite from March being this: “I see her developing the way Madonna has. This is the dance album of the decade” (on Gina G).

Steve Stelfox, the anti-hero of the piece, is the focal point and his whole life and view of just about everything seems to be motivated entirely by hate. He's a racist, pessimistic, homophobic, misanthropic degenerate obsessed with image and rank. He's barely got time for anyone; which makes the title somewhat of a misdemeanor. Stelfox doesn't have any friends. He's surrounded by acquaintances he can't stand - people he loathes; people he wishes he could kick down the stairs and stamp on until their brains pop out.

Yet, he's never actually openly nasty or voices such attitudes. It's nearly all in his head; this outpouring of bile is restrained behind a wall sleazy A&R spiel and chang that only we can see and experience. It only truly breaks through during 2 key moments in the book where events begin to slip into what I would call a diet-version of American Psycho. These moments are when the book starts to take a long hard look at the dark side, embracing it with open arms – it also says a lot about Stelfox and how influential he is at corrupting people. Hey, he might be a bit “swing and a miss” on some acts he’s signing, but manipulating people? Hell, he wrote, published and sold the t-shirt on that.

Stelfox isn't crazy though - he's just bored. He doesn't care about music, he's all about money and his life is one uncontrollable wreck of staggering from one line of coke to another, whilst trying to find an act/song/group/artist that the tolers (everyone that isn't Stelfox and his associates) and boilers (see here) will lap up. I suppose fear is something that flows through this book - the fear of failure. Stelfox is terrified of failing, so are his entourage of grinners; Trellick, Dunn, Ross, Hastings, Darren and Waters. All of them are absolutely petrified, but they hide it well - it's masked by copious amounts of alcohol, sex and drugs. This is then manifested into hate – so in effect, Kill Your Friends is about the turning of one negative, crippling emotion into another, forming this never-ending cycle of hell and desperate survival.


Now, you might be under the impression that this is a depressing read - far from it. It's so unrelentingly scathing, gratuitously vulgar and dripping with black humour - you'll have trouble keeping a straight face. It's packed with some truly superb scenes and chapters such as in June when they go to Glastonbury and shit begins to hit Stelfox's fan; Rage's 64 minute single, the burning hatred for Parker-Hall, pages 23 to 28 being absolutely INCREDIBLE reading (or depending on your copy, the chapter that starts "a couple of words for all you hopefuls out there in unsigned bands: Fuck. Off".), as well as Stelfox's own deviousness and planning, which has a scary Eric Cartman meets Blackadder quality.

I struggled to put this down; Niven has a real talent for creating a series of characters with truly repulsive traits that I couldn't get enough of.

Sen-say-shunal.

"Artists and records come and go...record companies are forever" - Anonymous lawyer.