Book review: MELTDOWN (Ben Elton)

Pride, as we all know, comes before a fall, and nothing epitomizes this better than the recent financial crisis, wherein ill-advised gambles made by bankers and a hubbub of lending loans for people who weren’t ready to buy a house came together in the mother of all hubrises. Ben Elton uses the credit crisis as the backdrop to his book, wherein a group of University friends who have all lucked out – to varying degrees – in their following life choices find that none of them are untouchable from the financial woes of the world.

At the centre of the story is London investment banker Jimmy Corby, an affable, happy-go-lucky man who fell into his trading job with the touch of good fortune that had accompanied him in almost every other step of his life, including meeting his ditzy, well-meaning wife Monica, without whom, it is generally agreed that Corby would have spiralled into the descending spiral of a heart attack or crack addiction. 

His old Uni mates, which include fellow banker Rupert, who carries his craft out with much more of a sneering veneer than Jim, Dave, an established architect, Henry, a self-conscious political activist and Lizzie and Robbo, a married couple, amongst whom she is the frontline of a popular food company that caters for upmarket events and he, mooching off her success.

The friends – and all their wives – have all been in frequent contact since their callow University days, though it is noted that their friendship has barely been tested, such is the cushiness of their jobs (all of them are comfortably on £50,000, minimum, their kids are in private education and they all have big-ass mortgages to match.)

But then along comes the financial crisis, and everything the main characters are used to, comes crashing down. Jimmy and Monica, with their three kids in their gigantic £7million house in Notting Hill, first have to let their nanny go, before facing the awkward conversation with the Headteacher wherein they’re told that as they can no longer afford their son Toby’s fees, they won’t be welcome there. Social satire is rife; the conversation between Jim and the teacher when state education is suggested as a viable option wouldn’t be out of place in a Catherine Tate sketch.

Before the crunch, Jimmy had invested in a road in Hackney with a view of having his friend Dave’s company re-designing it, making it more glamorous and bringing in some big bucks, but when the possibility of this goes out of the window, the street becomes nothing more than a popular squatting site for a local hobo called Bob. In one hilarious moment, Jimmy contemplates re-using a nappy on his youngest daughter Lillie in order to save 18p.

The fall-from-grace overtones could not be clearer, and Jimmy realising the error of his city culture ways is the ultimate in bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted, but there is joy and bathos to be had in his adventure.

Ben Elton throws in a few of his signature twists in the story, and with the unfurling of various friends’ economic situations, also reveals that the oh-so-perfect lives that each of the friends thought they led were really anything but – and how important their finances played in sustaining the illusion that all was well.

It’s very hard to be at the bottom, especially having been at the top for so long, but Jimmy and Monica are fairly likeable protagonists who we as the audience can warm to, even if some of their dialogues (such as the one when first deciding about what state school to put their son in) hint at the blissful ignorance that those who perceive themselves to be the upper strata of society have on certain life matters.

For the most part, Ben Elton tries to abstain from coming across as overly preachy and playing the blame game in his cautionary tale, and rather than pointing fingers or going for the banker bashing route, cannily points out that he without sin can cast the first stone; Henry, at the time of the crunch an esteemed politician, reprimands Jimmy and Rupert for their heady banker ways, yet he doesn’t hesitate to claim benefits on his second house in Berkshire – a wily nod at the actions of various MPs in the news currently.

The majority of the novel is written in his pithy, witty tone, but there is the odd line of writing that exhibits genuine emotion and does the impossible – has us sympathising for characters living in a mansion. There’s an uncharacteristically sweet denouement from Elton at the end, which, whilst pat, doesn’t ring any less true; it takes losing all the superficial stuff to work out what really matters in life.

Money, after all, doesn’t buy one love.

Grade: A-

Popcorn (Ben Elton), The Virgin and the Gypsy (DH Lawrence) and Murder in Mesopotamia (Agatha Christie), amongst others.

Thanks to a lengthy commuting time to and from work everyday, I've read a fair few books this Summer already. And, as a lot of these books have been wonderful, my thirst for reading has been re-ignited. Thus, if you have recommendations for reading material of any kind, hit me up!

Popcorn (Ben Elton)

Well, well, well. I'd thought Ben Elton had nailed down social satire in his book Past-Mortem, but it turns out he'd done an even better job of it 8 years earlier. Bruce Delamitri is a trendy film director who has just won an Oscar for his ultra-violent film Ordinary Americans, a film which he claims represents America in its brutal, bloody-thirsty state, but others have condemned for influencing America's violent condition. 

With an Oscar under his belt, Delamitri is highly sure of himself, spouting various tidbits of pseudo-philosophy and expecting people to lap up his every word. However, he really learns the meaning of the word hubris when two white trash serial killers hold him hostage on the very night he wins his Oscar. 

As with Dead Famous, this is deliciously dark stuff, some of the funniest moments being at things the reader really should not have found amusing. The epilogue was pithy and the fact that there were no really likeable characters meant that, amidst the horror, the reader derived a twisted sense of glee from everything that occured. Full of characters you can see in celebrities today and short, staccato chapters, this is as good a condemnation of the pliability of the masses as you'll ever find, I can't recommend this enough.

The Virgin and the Gypsy (DH Lawrence)

Despite usage of the word "insinuate" that definitely veers on the repetitive side, DH Lawrence's novella proved to be a brilliant read nonetheless. It tells the story of two vicar's daughters, Lucille and Yvette. When the daughters were little girls the vicar's wife had run off with another more virile man, and this hangs over him in all the puritanical things he does. 

That, along with the somewhat-deranged nan who lives with the girls, has affected them and their thinking in different ways, Lucille is more conservative but Yvette, free-spirited, finds herself drawn towards a local gypsy, who's sexual attraction (and interest in her) cannot be masked. Despite being warned off him, that only serves to make her more and more beguiled by him, and their relationship, though not high on the verbal interchanges, is compelling as it is beautiful. 

I won't lie, I was a tiny bit disappointed at the lack of a deflowering scene of any kind, but there was a metaphorical orgasm, when he was drying her off. Evocatively written and with an oddly banal ending, I was far more taken with this than Lady Chatterlay's Lover.

10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love (Linda Green)

This novel is, as the fluffy title would imply, a romantic comedy chicklit, but it was surprisingly, deeper than just that. It tells the story of a woman living up North (she resides in the Yorkshire area but works as a part-time news reporter in the Lancashire area) who has a two-year-old kid, Alfie, who's dad walked out on them on Alfie's first birthday. She's recently gone back to work as a reporter, wherein he's been promoted to her boss. Somewhat awkward. 

Not surprisingly, she hates men. Until this super-sweet, hot guy called Dan walks into her life. So far, very Sophie Kinsella. But it managed to balance the sweet with a surprisingly sour bit about Dan's backstory, wherein his dad got drunk and hit his mum (hence causing him to be somewhat of a closed book). 

The depiction of domestic violence was actually pretty disturbing in the book, especially how it escalated from verbal abuse to the odd slap to life-threatening amounts of violence. I found myself shedding tears at the most unexpected of moments during this book, and, surprisingly for a chicklit, there was football banter! At first I thought the author was a closet Kopite when she made Richard (the bastard ex) a Man Utd fan and hot Dan a Scouser, but then the narrator was a City fan so I don't know frankly. 

Anyway, I really liked the narrator's writing style, a fine balance between colloquial and intellectual. And I love how it demonstrated that amidst all the shit life throws up, we can eventually get our happy ending, if we're not afraid to try. Recommended.

The Big Four / Murder in Mesopotamia (Agatha Christie)

Not, as I'd blithely wondered, about the "big four" teams in the Premiership, but instead about a cartel

of mastermind criminals who collude to bring down entire empires.

There was a bit too much bluffing and double-bluffing regarding whether or not a pretty integral character was alive or dead in The Big Four to render it believable, plus it focussed more on the espionage side of things, when I prefer the murder mystery. But Agatha Christie showed just why Hercule Poirot remains one of the most beguiling, ingenious men in literature.

Murder in Mesopotamia, I was less taken with, just because I got rather confused when more and more and more characters got introduced (lol, I'm so clever NAT), but the plot twist was as audacious as I'd expect from Christie, and I'm glad the cold-hearted bitch at the centre of it all got what she deserved.

Tales From a Hen Weekend (Olivia Ryan)

Katie Halliday, a vivacious, happy 30something who believes in true love, is on the brink of getting married to Matt, the man she believes to be the love of her life. As he jets off for a weekend in Prague, she's off to Dublin with her friends, aunt and mother, but over the course of that holiday, home truths and murky secrets are revealed left, right and centre. 

This was a rather more predictable checklist than 10 Reasons Not to Fall In Love, and although the characters were all sweet enough (although I found it hard to warm to the protagonist because she seemed to have the gift of being loved universally, which I found hard to believe), the book itself had nothing new to contribute to the genre. 

A fun enough read, just massively forgettable.

Dead Lovely (Helen Fitzgerald)

Oooh er. Whatever I was expecting from Fitzgerald's novel, which revolves around a claustraphobic set-up of married couple Sarah and Kyle and their best friend's Krissie's camping holiday in the Scottish highlands, it wasn't this. 

Krissie, you see, is a free-spirited woman who likes the length of her sexual conquests to be inversely proportional of the willy size of the men inside her who has recently given birth to Robbie following a one-night stand in a public toilet whilst on holiday, and Sarah, despite being married to Kyle and copulating in cycles, can't conceieve for love nor money. 

Add into this equation the fact that Kyle finds himself increasingly attracted to Sarah and it doesn't take Stephen Hawking to work out that this seedy threesome is just an accident waiting to happen. And, sure enough, there's murders, failed murders, attempted murders, and finally, a plot twist so dark that I was surprised such a thing got published. 

But credit to Fitzgerald for her accomplished fusion of sex, murder and human relationships, as well as the way she evoked laughter even at the most dastardly of actions.

Not a bad bunch, on the whole!

Reading & Writing.

Last night and this morning, I was reading Ben Elton's Past Mortem, a murder mystery centering around a murderer who, as the book goes on, is revealed as someone who is killing people who were/are bullies, and killing them in bold ways that re-live how the bullies treated their victims in the past. Investigating the case if 5'4" ginger policeman Ed Newsom, who, despite a mediocre childhood, is now fairly prominent and of good status, albeit short. He is also alone, and harbours an all-consuming crush on his sergeant Natasha, who is sadly attached to her abusive and good-for-nothing freeloader boyfriend Lance. One day, on a whim, Ed logs onto friendsunited.com and finds himself opening a door to his past. His childhood object of lust, Christine, holds a get-together for everyone in his year, and he finds that work and pleasure most certainly do not mix, as the killer's next strike is much closer to home.

Aside from a far-too-long and downright wrong sex scene, Past Mortem proved a highly enjoyable read. Ed Newsom is an engaging and likeable protagonist and the blend of mystery and bathos is very well done. I'm kind of slow, so, whilst some people said they saw the twist coming a mile off, I genuinely was surprised when the true culprit was revealed. And, whilst killing off bullies is not a sensible solution to bullying, the long-term effects of bullying (even if intended casually by the proprietor) are investigated with sensitivity and compassion. The book actually has a great range of scope, tackling issues such as domestic violence, friendship, insecurity, and the need to feel validation. Some of these topics are tackled better than others, and some of the characters are downright dislikable, but aside from that, this is fine, frothy stuff from Elton.

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'Tis the WGA tonight. My predictions for winners...

Will win / should win
Original Screenplay:
(500) Days of Summer
A Serious Man
Avatar
The Hangover
The Hurt Locker

Adapted Screenplay:
Crazy Heart
Julie & Julia
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Star Trek
Up in the Air