Product Description

"The Book of Dave" is based around the rants of Dave Rudman, a disgruntled East End taxi driver, who writes his woes down and buries them only to have them discovered 500 years later and used as the sacred text for a religion that has taken hold in the flooded remnants of London. Will Self's big bold book dares to take on the grand themes in the grand manner. It is at once a profound meditation upon the nature of received religion; a love story; a caustic satire of contemporary urban life and a historical detective story set in the far future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266330 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 495 pages

GQ, July 2006
'Vivid, visceral and breathtakingly ambitious, this is Self's best yet'

Telegraph, May 20, 2006
The Book of Dave is Self's most successful novel to date. Funny, frightening, moving'

Arena, July 2006
'Epic and bitterly funny, this stew of satire and linguistic wizardry is everything you'd expect from Britain's master of misanthropy'

Customer Reviews

Deep, dark and brilliant - but not my idea of fun.
The Book of Dave looks at the logical conclusions of the rise in our society of acrimonious divorce, with the dice loaded against fathers in terms of both access and child support. Will Self presents the bleak, flawed life of Dave, a bigoted, occasionally violent London cabbie who is fighting to sustain access to his son. Dave, in an anti-depressant fuelled psychosis, writes and buries his own book of holy law, based on the Knowledge, his hatred of `mummies' and his longing for `the lost boy'. Self juxtaposes this with a grim post-apocalyptic vision of the future, where Dave's book has been unearthed and adopted as the new religion. Relationship breakdown, domestic violence against women and hatred and disenfranchisement between parents hasn't just become the norm, it's now the law.

The Book of Dave is as adventurous, inventive and socially-relevant as, say, Great Apes but it just doesn't have the laughs of Will Self's earlier fiction. His sense of the ridiculous that makes his earlier books so funny is present but is drowned by a relentlessly depressing story of cruelty, despair and failure which at times is hard for the reader to bear. Some readers might find the first sight of the dialogue off-putting as the majority of it is written phonetically but it's actually just Eastenders-style Cockney and is much more accessible than the narration in Anthony Burgess' brilliant A Clockwork Orange, for example.

It's been said before that people are either fans of Will Self's journalism or fans of his fiction. Personally, I'm in awe of his fiction. This particular example of it didn't make me laugh but it was as unnerving, intelligent and compelling as the best of his earlier work.

Not for everyone
I suspect this is not a book for the masses.

As other reviewers have noted, the novel does have two strands narrated across alternating chapters - one set in the very recent past following Dave the Cabbie and one in the far future, where Dave the Cabbie's demented ramblings have sparked off a new world religion.

I suspect that if one had the patience, there is a work of genius bursting to get out. The references from the future turn up later in the text as deriving from the past. Read across is not always obvious, and one comes to accept eccentricities from the future before realising how far out of context they have become from references in the present.

The phonetically rendered vernacular is irritating, although I rather liked cloakyfings. But as with other texts written in vernacular, the use of it becomes both less frequent and less irritating as the novel progresses. And underneath it all is a brilliantly detailed vision of a future dystopian society.

The plots in the two stories are set out in non-linear style and each has a cast of similarly named characters, makign it quite difficult to follow. However, each plot is engaging in its own way. And whislt the Dave the Taximan story is the most gripping, the far future story is more poignant because of its finality. The Dave the Taximan story offers a rationale for the later events, but one knows, ultimately, where the story will end up. The downside of the interleaved narratives, of course, is that the penultimate chapter has to reach a crescendo, and then the last chapter has to work up to a second one when you really feel as though the story's finished.

The characters themselves are less well drawn in the future narrative than the complex characters of the recent past. Dave the Cabbie is not the racist, mysoginist bigot portrayed in the blurb. In fact, he is repelled by his colleagues who are that way inclined. He is caring and sensitive, and that is probably his downfall as he finds his life spinning out of control. This adds to the irony of Dave's book becoming a sacred text. There are wonderful cameos from the Skip Tracer and the Fighting Fathers (or whatever they called themselves).

Overall, this is a wonderful and funny satire on the nature of religion and personal destiny, along with some dazzlingly imaginative speculation of a far future revisitation of mediaeval values. It is heavy going, though, with dense plotting and lengthy detail. Worth it, though, and it deserves to get somewhere in the annual awards round.

Superb!
It's one thing, for a writer, to think of a premise that would make an entertaining book, and quite another to be able to write it with a style and panache that suits the content. In "The Book of Dave", Will Self proves that he is more than capable of pulling both off at the same time.

In the novel, two stories are intertwined. One set in the recent past, and another set 500 years into the future. The first tale tells of Dave Rudman, a London cabbie, who is descending into a state of depression, madness & desparation after the breakup of his marriage, and a messy divorce cutting him off from his son. At the depths of his despair, Dave decides to write a book for his son, part fatherly advice, part delusional rant, in lieu of being able to see his boy.

In the future, after a disaster has flooded the world, the book that Dave wrote is a foundation for a whole religion, where Dave's personal beliefs are magnified, distorted and misinterpreted, and Dave himself is considered a Deity. In this future, a young boy Carl Denevush, embarks on a quest to find his heretic father, and to find the 'Second book'.

At first, "The Book of Dave" appears to be a challenging read. Reminiscent of 'Cloud Atlas', or 'A Clockwork Orange', the parts of the story set in the future are written in a 'Mockney' dialect, so conversations are distorted on paper. However, like the previously mentioned novels, once the reader relaxes into the rhythm and the style of the book, "The Book of Dave" is a rewarding and enjoyable read.

One of the strongest aspects of the book is Will Self's ability to create very real characters. Even minor players are fleshed out and believable, and the interplay is convincing. Dave's own character, is both repugnant and endearing at the same time. The backdrops of a gritty present day London, and the dystopian ruralized future are well-presented and beautifully written. Admittedly, it's not a 'page-turning rip-roaring rollercoaster of a read', but if you wanted that, you'd be reading Dan Brown.

Where the novel really succeeds is in the messages it pushes to the reader. The main question it poses is to consider our own religious ritual and belief system, and its origins. For example, would we ignore the Dead Sea Scrolls if they revealed something that would threaten to challenge the very foundations of christianity? More contemporary and accessable questions regarding religion, family, divorce & separation, and alienation are also handled with aplomb, and even with a little humour.

Regardless of what you may think about the author - Whether you just remember him from his brief stint on the comedy game show "Shooting Stars", or have dismissed his other publications, "The Book of Dave" is a very worthwhile novel that I'd recommend to anyone.