Product Description

The word pistache (pis-tash) means a friendly spoof or parody of another's work. [Derivation uncertain, possibly a cross between pastiche and p**stake.] From Thomas Hardy's football report to Dan Brown's visit to the cash dispenser, the work of the great and the not-so-great is here sent up with little hope of coming down. Most of these pieces began their life on Radio Four's "The Write Stuff", but have been retooled for the printed page. Others, such as Martin Amis' first day at Hogwarts, have been written specially for this collection. Philip Larkin's "Lines in Celebration of the Queen Mother's 115th Birthday", first banned, then cut by the BBC, appears in its entirety for the first time. This is not a book for the faint-hearted or the downstairs lavatory. It is a book for the bedside table of someone you cannot live without.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110815 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Sunday Telegraph
'Unforgivably witty'

The Times
'Faulks picks up the big names of the Western canon and plonks
them down mercilessly in the most unexpected places'

About the Author
Sebastian Faulks's seven previous novels include Birdsong (1993), The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), Charlotte Gray (1998), On Green Dolphin Street (2001) and Human Traces (2005). He is also the author of a biographical study, The Fatal Englishman (1996). He lives in London, is married and has two sons and a daughter.

Customer Reviews

Not quite as funny as you think it's going to be
It's strange to think of the author of Birdsong turning his hand to this sort of thing. It's a very short book of literary parodies and indeed it's difficult not to smile at Dan Brown at the cashpoint, Martin Amis's first day at Hogwarts or Kipling's 'If...' rewritten for today's journalists. The trouble is that smiling is all you do - it's not really 'laugh out loud' funny.

There has been a certain amount of precedent for this kind of spoof, from Craig Brown's regular 'Diary' column in Private Eye to John Crace's 'Digested Read' in The Guardian. Both have led to books of collections and both are as funny, or frequently funnier, than this.

Clever, certainly, but somehow not quite funny enough.

Clever, clever, sometimes too clever!
There is no doubt that Faulks is brilliant. This little collection of pastiche/piss-takes (hence the title) proves that more than ever. he takes average occurences and uses famous narrative styles/voices to match these. Ian Fleming doing James Bond in a supermarket is priceless... but the prize goes to his version of Dan Brown going to cahspoint. Hilarious and says in a more concise, witty and accurate way what thousands of newspaper critics have been trying to say about Brown for years.

Many smiles of recognition
I found this in a remaindered bookshop a few weeks ago and picked it up immediately, thinking of the amazing parodies that Faulks used to produce (seemingly with little or no preparation) on Radio 4's "The Write Stuff". This is a handy collection of the best of them, along with a few that have been specially written for this compilation. As others have pointed out, there's some degree of unevenness here, though it'd be churlish to ask for everything to be up at the standard of Dan Brown at the cashpoint, Noel Coward's lyric about Big Brother, or James Bond's visit to the supermarket. I relished the former so greatly that I've practically learnt it off by heart; having been so moved by Brown's uncanny ability to use the wrong word almost all the time that I tried my own hand at a parody (in my review of "Angels And Demons" on this site), I felt I wanted to reach through the pages to shake hands with Faulks as he struck exactly the right note in this hilarious piece. This little book doesn't take long to read at all, but you'll be smiling for some time after putting it down.