Before that I read
Incendiary, by Chris Cleave. I bought it purely on the basis of the opening paragraph - or, OK, the two opening paragraphs:
Quote:Dear Osama, they want you dead or alive so the terror will stop. Well I wouldn't know about that I mean rock n roll didn't stop when Elvis died on the khazi it just got worse. Next thing you know there was Sonny & Cher and Dexy's Midnight Runners. I'll come to them later. My point is it's easier to start these things than to finish them. I suppose you thought of that did you?
There's a reward of 25 million dollars on your head but don't lose sleep on my account Osama. I have no information leading to your arrest or capture. I have no information full effing stop. I'm what you'd call an infidel and my husband called working class. There's a difference you know. But just supposing I did clap eyes on you. Supposing I saw you driving a Nissan Primera down towards Shoreditch and grassed you to the old bill. Well. I wouldn't know how to spend 25 million dollars. It's not as if I've got anyone to spend it on since you blew up my husband and my boy.
The writing is quick-witted, head-on, urban yet clever. Often hilarious, and yet you do get to feel for/with the protagonists. Until things get out of hand. As the dry wit and well-struck "daily" observations of the first half get outshadowed by an ever more elaborate, over-the-top disaster movie / polit-thriller kind of set-up, the book slids off the rails.
It doesnt help that, reading the book post-7/7, it is so thoroughly shown up as an all too alarmist imagination; in reality, Londoners and authorities didn't panic even remotely like in the book.
The story remains gripping enough till the end, for sure, but whereas the first 100 pages or so, you're thinking, these funny and harshly spot-on observations make for something quite special, in the end it's just become one out of a hundred exciting, engaging paperbacks that flood the trendy, thirty-something bookmarket.
The protagonist, an Eastend girl who is contrasted with the boorish, chillingly soulless and unscrupled yuppie classes, at first immediately solidifies my sympathy and identification. I'm on her side, too - and it's not just because the book wants it so, but the other way round: the book hits a chord with me
because I identify with her.
But as the story continues and escalates, the black and white contrasts of rather cardboard-thin personas start showing up how she is, in this book (written by an author who is himself from the Daily Telegraph yuppie crowd), nothing more than a prototype, and a particularly cliched one too. One that blends classic stereotypes about (the plain, more 'real', more 'truthful') working class with those about the (more soulful, ready-to-sacrifice, caring and loving, selfless) woman and mother, and once you become aware of that, it's somehow just distasteful.
Still a good read, mind you, perfect for the daily commuter ride if you have one: it is undoubtedly very funny, and quite exciting. But in the end it's also just fodder.
