The Book of Dave

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Self channels what were then (early 2000s) contemporary issues such as Fathers for Justice and the Iraq war in his present story in a creative and imaginative tale that plays with language and ideas. Although it might sound like a somewhat trite aim, Self does want to remind people how important it is to respect almost every living organism we are faced with, since we might just regress back to being savages after a nuclear holocaust and end up the lowest form of being. It takes a long time to melt the two kilometre thick ice sheet over Antarctica, so generating the 216 feet sea level rises that would make an island of Hampstead heath, for that of course is what Ham is. The past story charts Dave’s life and breakdown as he tries to reconnect with his son; the future story follows Carl, a child of the remote community of Ham, as he tries to navigate the inquisitorial perils of the Church of Dave in pursuit of the truth about what happened to his father.

Dave Rudman, the eponymous hero, is a typical Self character: over-weight, smelly, prejudiced and a poor husband, a poor father and a poor son. The first thing to say about any Will Self book is that, love him or hate him, you can’t help but be impressed by the quality of his writing.

It is reminiscent of the story of the Mormon religion and enough clues are dispersed through the book as to inspiration for Dave's purported "code" of law stemming from Mormonism. The primitive brutality of the primeval civilisation holds a clear mirror to the situation in Iraq (hinted in the second chapter) and that the causation of war and strife is all predicated upon documents as unverifiable as the next. 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 future world, or London at least, is governed from this book—the last remaining edict of civilisation. Mark Lawrence in his Broken Empire Series invented a far future world by simply melting all the glaciers in the aftermath of a “Day of a thousand suns” that the reader quickly associates with some kind of nuclear holocaust.

It’s 500+ pages of combination of some raped and twisted language you just can’t read and something that you can read perfectly but cannot understand! You'd almost feel sorry for the black taxi drivers that are as familiar as the red route buses in London.Is it worth risking your sovereignty in this society to speak up against doctrines that offend your soul? She is one of the very few authors who provide readers with the whole shebang: pace, plot, and darkly unexpected twists and turns. But if not, then I wouldn’t recommend it because you just won’t enjoy it – you’ll struggle, and the book will take its toll. The community is split between those who want to achieve immortality by uploading themselves into the Dave mainframe, and those who believe an advanced robot like Dave can solve mankind’s problems, or even find a way of getting to another planet. It's dense, difficult, funny, and like Burgess' Clockwork Orange, needs a dictionary in the back for the words from Symun's world.