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Are You Experienced?
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| List Price: | £7.99 |
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Product Description
A devastatingly funny satire on the whole idea of student travel,and particularly the India back-pack trail. Dave travels to India with Liz because he thinks he might be able to get her into bed. Liz travels to India with Dave because she wants a companion for her voyage of spiritual discovery. She loves it. He dreams of frosty mornings, pints of lager and restaurants where vegetable curry is only a side-dish...
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #21562 in Books
- Published on: 1998-06-04
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.co.uk
For anyone with the slightest curiosity about travelling, or even if you've been, William Sutcliffe's tremendously funny Are You Experienced? will have you in stitches. The protagonist is Dave, a 19-year-old Londoner on a gap year before starting university. He had no intention of leaving Europe, until his best mate James, who's about to go on a trek through the Himalayas, challenges him. "Do you want to learn Fwench David? Something pwactical for your CV?" he taunts when he hears Dave is going to be a waiter at a Swiss ski resort.
Admitting his fears, ("Suffering, danger and poverty are all fine by me, but dirt and disease are two things I happen to hate") Dave is determined to prove he's not a coward and accepts an invitation to go to India with James's girlfriend Liz (in anticipation of consummating their burgeoning relationship). But by the time they get on the plane it all goes downhill. Bickering constantly, their adaption to India couldn't be more different. Liz embraces it--hugging beggars and wearing saris, while Dave's dry-humoured rants, scepticism and fear of the unknown eventually drive her away in search of her "centre".
The characters the pair meet along the way draw upon all the old hippy-traveller stereotypes, but there's also a few new ones in keeping with the times. There's Ranj--a British-born Indian who hates Indians; Jez--a public-school-educated undergraduate whose travels are being funded by daddy; and Caz and Fee who experience the side-effects of "Intimate Yoga".
While this story is ultimately a funny piece of fiction, it also addresses more serious considerations, such as cultural stereotypes, peer pressures and making life-changing decisions.
This book is irresistible and seasoned travellers will empathise with the situations Dave finds himself in, (his graphic description of a bout of Dehli-belly is guaranteed to make you feel sorry for him, and nauseous too). Be prepared to laugh out loud. --Angela Boodoo
Review
The US debut of British novelist Sutcliffe is a perfectly hip riff on either The Razor's Edge or Innocents Abroad - take your pick - in which a pilgrimage to India enables a callow English yob to understand just how badly he wants to remain unenlightened. Dave Greenford, like any 18-year-old, wants more than anything to get away. Anywhere. Even Switzerland, where he learns French and makes some money but comes home soon enough, convinced that he needs an even greater escape. "There was a general belief," James quickly infers from his friends, "that a long and unpleasant holiday was of crucial importance to one's development as a human being." And India, for distance and discomfort, can't be beat. It helps that Dave's incipient girlfriend Liz has been hot to visit India for some time, and that both Dave and Liz have wrung permission and some cash from their parents for a year of travel before settling down to university life. So the two are soon weaving their way through every hill station and hostel of the Lonely Planet guide, banging out with all the other Brits, and trying not to be taken for tourists. Dave even manages to get into Liz's pants for a while, though she quickly goes native on him and they split up, leaving Dave, with three months left before his return, on his own. Can he face the Subcontinent by himself?. India is usually too crowded to be very solitary, and Dave is the sort who makes friends easily: before long, he teams up with Rani, an Indian from London who speaks Dave's language (i.e., beer and girls) and is on the lam from an arranged marriage his family is forcing him into. Poor Dave and Ranj know they will have to give in and grow up eventually, but they're determined not to go down without a fight. For three months, at least. Unless they get laid first. Undergraduate humor at its best: raucous, irreverent, and dead-on funny. (Kirkus Reviews)
About the Author
William Sutcliffe was born in London in 1971, and was educated at Cambridge. His first novel NEW BOY was published to enthusiastic reviews and a large amount of publicity in spring 1996. He lives in London, N4.
