Product Description

Gridlock is when a city dies. Killed in the name of freedom. Killed in the name of oil and steel. Chocked on carbon monoxide and strangled with a pair of fluffy dice. How did it come to this? How did the ultimate freedom machine end up paralysing us all? How did we end up driving to our own funeral, in somebody else's gravy train? Deborah and Geoffrey know, but they have transport problems of their own, and anyway, whoever it was that murdered the city can just as easily murder them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75927 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

NEW SCIENTIST
`The book is stuffed with funny lines and the lot is more gripping than any tyre advertisement.'

From the Publisher
Too many cars and not enough space equals gridlock.

About the Author
Ben Elton's career as both performer and writer encompasses some of the most memorable and incisive comedy of the last twenty years.His work as a stand-up comedian hosting such ground-breaking television series as Saturday Live and The Man from Auntie has been hugely influential, as have his hit television sitcoms The Young Ones, Blackadder and The Thin Blue Line. Elton has written three hit West End musicals, including the global phenomenon We Will Rock You, which he also directs, and three West End plays, including the multi-award-winning Popcorn. His internationally bestselling novels include Stark, Inconceivable, Dead Famous and High Society.In 2000 he wrote and directed the feature film Maybe Baby based on his acclaimed novel Inconceivable.

Customer Reviews

Seriously disappointing
This offering was substandard to say the least. First of all Elton's attempt at preaching to his reader is artless and unsubtle. Entire paragraphs are dedicated to pointing out the abuses of the automotive industry, or how bad cars are for the environment, without any attempt to be witty or relevant to the plot. The book therefore amounts to mediocre humour interspersed with letters to the editor. Secondly, there are several Americans in the book who sound extremely British and use expressions and terms no American would ever use. Instead Elton relies on crude characterisations of American oil-company baddies with British vocab. Lastly (and I do acknowledge my own pedantry here) the book was FULL of mistakes, particularly punctuation but also grammatical. I found this extremely irritating and distracting. I wanted to take out a red pen, correct the mistakes, and send it back to the publisher with a note suggesting their editors actually make themselves useful. I am so glad this book was lent to me and that I didn't spend any money on it.

Not as funny as I'd hoped.
Although very funny in places, and tackling very important issues, this is not an amazingly well written book. Apart from glaring grammar glitches and the like, Elton sometimes gets bogged down in the (extremely important) moralizing which gives the book a somewhat disjointed feel. Perhaps more judicious editing would have been in order. The sort of book you read once and then pass on.

The least impressive of Ben Eltons books.
Having read a few of Ben Eltons books, and enjoying them immensely, I was expecting the same from Gridlock. After a few dozen pages I realised that there was something different about this book. I found the humour didn't strike the right cord with me. If anything the humour irritated me. It was almost an overdone Black Adder type humour. Its one of Eltons earlier books (1991), I think, and can only assume that he hadn't got out of his Black Adder/Young Ones phase. However it was a good story, and a half decent book, it just wasn't as satisfying a read as 'Popcorn', 'Dead Famous' or 'High Society', which I enjoyed much more.