The Book of Dave

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In my mind’s eye they resemble a cross between a pig, a person and a duck, with a fondness for wallowing in mud and swimming. The novel’s protagonist is a computer programmer named Syz who works at the lab, a complex city structure centred around a computer.

Dave Rudman, a London taxi-driver, has a casual sexual encounter with a young woman named Michelle Brodie. Since then it has sat there, like a guilty secret, a book by one of my favourite authors – unfinished. As always, don't take BookBrowse's word for it, instead read a substantial excerpt (exclusive to BookBrowse) representing both the present and future storylines, and decide for yourself whether it's a book for you. The plot is therefore accessible with each chapter, provided the reader is willing to follow the flights of spontaneous imagination Self builds his world upon brick-by-brick. Following the occasionally wild adventures from formation in a university studio to stratospheric heights after the success of ‘Tainted Love’, to their split and subsequent reunions – including selling out London’s O2 Arena in 2018 – the whole Soft Cell journey is told frankly and fondly.As a crutch, of sorts, for the poor reader, Self has provided a glossary at the end so you can keep referring back to that when you hit a word you don't understand. These stem from his anger with his ex-wife, Michelle, who he believes is unfairly keeping him from his son. After I went through a brilliant comic monologue describing all the dogs I had seen that day ("This big, gray. As an example, burgerkine is a word used to describe cattle and cloakyfing is used to indicate a Muslim burka.

It is definitely worth the effort though because understanding the language becomes easier as you get used to it and, as usual, Self provides an interesting story and somehow creates seemingly unpleasant and revolting characters that you nevertheless begin to identify with and like. But it is Will's fault that he cribbed (read: ransacked) Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, which I couldn't get through. Having led large restaurants in Manchester and Liverpool, he’s found fame on BBC’s Great British Menu. Most obviously it is a satire on religious fundamentalism, and the cynicism of those who would corrupt it for their own advancement. The Book of Dave represents all religious texts: no-one knows where they came from, but one day they were found and people started to follow them.

Weird and wonderful, this tale starts as two disparate threads of narrative, seemingly nothing connecting save the odd word or concept here or there. Eric and Dave is the story of Eric Gill and Dave Hollins, two ex-goalkeepers now aged 91 and 84 respectively. It is his teachings that strongly influence his food and help to ensure Lu Ban is different to any other restaurant in the country.

Shuttling between the recent past and a far-off future where England is terribly altered, The Book of Dave is a strange and troubling mirror held up to our times: disturbing, satirizing and vilifying who and what we think we are. The world in this one is wonderfully imagined and I love the interplay between elements in the past and future. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item.Makes me sound like a moron, I know, but life is too short for me to spend my pleasure time reading a manifesto left behind by a bitter, angry man. Nevertheless, the reader cannot help but like him because of his vulnerability and his attempt to uphold his own moral code. The geography of the island, illustrated in a map at the start of the book, bears close resemblance to the modern areas of Hampstead which inspired it. Dave buries the book, which is discovered centuries later and used as the sacred text for a dogmatic, cruel, and misogynistic religion that takes hold in the remnants of southern England and London following catastrophic flooding. It is announced that Dave will soon be ready, and the inhabitants of the lab begin to work through the night, losing themselves in their work; the physical world around Syz literally begins to crumble.

Having taken a career break from secondary schooling to further my own education with some post graduate study I’ve completed an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast. Frustrated by his provincial surroundings growing up in 1970s Blackpool, Dave Ball initially saw an escape in rock ’n’ roll and had early ambitions to learn the guitar. The potential of rising sea-levels to make a future Atlantis out of London and East Anglia is an alluring concept.This PhD will involve me reading a lot of climate fiction novels as well as thinking and writing about the ways in which they address aspects of climate change.