The Book Tower

4/5

At night Dave worked the mainline stations – Victoria and Paddington mostly. The west of London felt warmer in the winter, better lit, less susceptible to the chill of deep time. The fares were frowsty under the sodium lamps. In the back of the cab they slumped against their luggage, and Dave drove them home to Wembley, Twickenham and Muswell Hill. Or else they were tourists bound for the Bonnington, the Inn on the Park or the Lancaster – gaunt, people-barns, where maids flitted through the lobbies, cardboard coffins of dying blooms cradled in their arms. In the wee-wee hours he parked up at an all-night café in Bayswater and sat reading the next day’s news, while solider citizens lay abed waiting for it to happen. His fellow night people were exiguous – they wore the faces of forgotten comedians unfunny and unloved.

Will Self’s novel follows the mental decline of a London taxi driver called Dave Rudman. Seperated from his wife, estranged from his son, Dave slips further into a bleak and confusing world. Reality takes a very weird detour and, when broken, raving and wired on anti-depressants, Dave decides to write it all down. And he doesn’t come near to imagining the legacy he’s creating. Five centuries later, with London flooded and largely unrecognisable, its degenerate citizens worship a new Bible. A book found amongst the remains of the forgotten past – The Book of Dave.

The Book of Dave is a challenging yet compelling read. I was daunted at first by this lengthy novel and came close to abandoning it more than once. It wasn’t until I was at least a third of the way through that it began to grip; I was gripped by Self’s sheer inventiveness, his gift for language and his imagination. It’s one of the most difficult books I’ve read for a while, but Will Self is a highly original and bold voice. As the chapters alternate between Dave Rudman’s sorry life, his decline chronicled between the late 1980s and early 2000s, and the dreamlike future, the reader is given no easy task in making sense of this novel. But if the future chapters are at times unfathomable, they serve well as a nightmarish echo of the present day story. And for me, the contemporary setting worked the best. At first I found Self’s writing grimly reminiscent of Martin Amis’s approach to the city in London Fields; an over the top and detached view, but he soon surpasses any comparison with Amis and reveals what a distinct, mature and gripping talent he has become. And a great London writer – his view of the city is original, romantic and disturbing. And in my mind accurate – he knows his London.

Where in lesser hands The Book of Dave would result in a pretentious and unreadable mess, Self manages to pull it off. A great writer, an infuriating writer. At times I was genuinely moved by this book, and doffed my cap to his skill as an author. At other times I was screaming at him to cut the incomprehensible chapters and get back on track. But that’s Will Self. To get him, you’ve got to love him and you’ve got to hate him. But you can’t ignore him.