Product Description

It's 2.15am, you're in bed alone and you're woken by the phone. And as you wake, in the tiny moment between sleep and consciousness, you know already that something is wrong. You feel your heart beat. You listen. And then you hear the one voice in the world you least expect...your very own blast from the past.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #657627 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review

It's 2.15 a.m. and the phone wakes you. Only someone bad would ring you at such an hour, or someone with bad news, which would probably be worse. You hear the answer-machine kick in and feel your heart beat. You listen. And then you hear the voice you least expect - a blast from the past."

Blast From The Past is the fifth novel from Ben Elton, the celebrated and controversial comedian/playwright/author whose TV credits include The Young Ones and Blackadder as well as the previous novels Stark and Popcorn. Jack Kent, US Captain stationed at Greenham Common during the early eighties, has a secret and unlikely affair with the Polly Sacred Cycle of the Womb and Moon, a 17-year-old ideological peace protester:

the star-crossed lovers made Romeo and Juliet look like an arranged marriage! Pamela Anderson and the Ayatollah Khomeni would have made a more natural-looking couple.

Sixteen years later and a four star General, Kent returns to Britain to seek out his only true love. Polly, now a lonely thirtysomething Equal Opportunities employee, is being stalked by the Bug when the phone rings.

Set in the staid, politically-correct nineties of New Labour Britain, the story flashes back with comic effect to the early eighties, a time of protest, strikes and Cold War. While hardcore Elton fans might be disappointed with the weak plot and smaller helpings of piercing wit and wacky socio-political observations, Blast from the Past still offers up some laugh-out-loud lines and entertaining reading. --Andrew Crawford

Review
Praise from the UK for "Blast from the Past: "
" The action is tight and well-plotted, the dialogue is punchy, and the whole thing rolls along so nicely."
--"The Guardian"
" Ben Elton's in top form with this gripping black comedy--a sure-fire hit."
--"New Woman"
" A lively thriller of sexual politics and morality. Elton's best book yet."
--"Elle"
" Blast from the Past is Elton at his most outrageously entertaining."
--"Cosmopolitan"

"From the Hardcover edition."

From the Publisher
A blast of energy and zeitgeist from Britain’s foremost comic talent.

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Customer Reviews

A lighterweight quick flick
I've come to expect big things from Ben Elton, but this ain't it.

The story is good and the characters are good fun. I suspect he's taking the mickey out of aspects of good friends (including himself), and he brings things to life well, as always.

The plot isn't as complete as others he's written though, and there's nothing to really offer the suprise element that he does usually.

Having said that, his class is still there, and my 3 stars indicates that it's good, not bad or excellent. Many writers would love their best efforts to match Eltons weaker ones.

At least it was short!
If you like a good story-dont bother. If you like well rounded characters-dont bother. If you like a good ending-dont bother.
If you like plot twists-dont bother. If you're idea of a good book is something you can read in 3 or 4 hours without taxing your intellect then go for it. This is such a poor book. I have never written one of these reviews before, despite having read some excellent, indifferent and shockingly bad books in my time, but this one was so poor I felt compelled. I got this book in a job lot and as it was sitting gathering dust I thought I'd give it a go-not having read any of Ben Elton's books before but admiring his comedy writing in the past. There is very little point to this book, the story is wafer-thin. The characters are all cardboard cutouts with no depth whatsoever and appeared to change their patterns of speech and vocabulary at will, making them wholly unconvincing. The plot is extremely predictable, making the twists as twisty as a straightedge and the ending is truly terrible. The book is not even particualrly well written. It appeared that the story couldve been written in 10 pages. It was all filler no killer.
Elton could have indeed summed this book up himself in his script for blackadder goes forth when edmund reviews baldricks poem "the german guns":
It started badly, tailed off in the middle and the least said about the ending the better! Indeed Elton himself seemed all to happy to recyle his own old stand up gags at various inappropriate points.
I can only wonder if it was not for the name of the author, would this have been deemed worthy of publication at all??

amateurish work from ben elton
this is the fourth book by Ben Elton I've read and I adored the other three, I couldn't gobble them up fast enough. It's hard to believe this book is by the same author. The first chapter was excellent and I wanted to know what happened in the end(hence the two stars) but what happened in between was awful. If a GCSE student was asked to try writing a novel this might be what they'd come out with.

It breaks so many rules of creative writing - but not in a 'so good I know how to break the rules' sort of way but in a 'I don't know what the rules are' sort of way. For example, the shifting perspective within chapters, within paragraphs and even within sentences is EXTREMELY annoying. One of the main joys of reading is experiencing someone's point of view, almost becoming that person until the spell is broken. Although readers can tolerate a change of identity between chapters, such changes within paragraphs just confuse. We don't know who we're meant to like, or care about, and consequently we care about no one.

Secondly, there is so so sooo much irrelevant waffle in this book - when you can skip entire chapters and not miss a single thing, it's not a good sign.

Ben Elton was onto something with the stalking storyline: it's chilling and fascinating. Unfortunately he had to find something to fill it out with but he couldn't work out what. A love story? A political rant? Neither of these work at all and are both pointless and boring. It doesn't even have his trademark wit.

If you haven't read any Ben Elton, skip this one - instead read Blind Faith, Inconceivable or Dead Famous, all of which are excellent.