Ben Elton – Stark
In my quest for something to read on the bus I noticed Ben Elton – Stark at the top of the novel/comedy pile. That’ll do
thinks I.
I got the bus to work and read some. Then read some more on the way home on the bus. And still wasn’t in to it.
The writing so far has been truly awful. I read something mildly interesting and looked at the bottom of the page to see it was the land mark century – page 100 before something amusing happened.
About 10 pages in I seriously considered writing to Ben Elton and asking for my 20p back.
Anyway, why am I writing a mini ramble so early into a book? I had a quick glance at Amazon and noticed it was averaging 4 out of 5. What the hell? I then looked at Wikipedia which notes it was commercially and critically successful in the United Kingdom and Australia.
and sold over a million copies.
Really?
Really??
The characters so far have been woeful. Page upon describing them from an authors perspective, it reads like a first years essay at school:
Jim was wearing his flares. Flares were out. He figured that they would come back round again and so he was ahead of fashion. He thought he was cool – but he wasn’t. He remembered meeting the woman and how it had went. Now he was going to see her again and wanted to impress. So To that they could have SEX. He liked SEX and thought about it a lot. But he was pretending to be who he was to get some SEX. The last time they met there was a discussion about some boring fucking subject which the reader is not interested in. He had briefly considered taking position A. He then thought about position B. But because the character was a fucking moron he couldn’t answer before the woman (with boobs) said something that meant she blatantly supported position B. I like position B he had then said. Wow he was in there! Except they didn’t have SEX at all. In fact she went away in a taxi later. But that was ok. Tonight was date 2 and he was sure to have SEX after that. Oh here are two random characters who are also annoying. They will discuss SEX and drugs and some random tangent to the plot which is a mystery and will probably make the book even more boring on a second read.
This is not a quote, just me paraphrasing the style. It goes on and fucking on. I was going to drop it but am curious as to whether he learns to write by the end of it hence earning the 4 stars of praise.
Once more into the breach.