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threemonkeysI didn't get a lot of reading done while on holiday. I read bits from some SJV nominated stuff and Striped Holes by Damien Broderick. The latter was a humourous offering from the Sheckley school of silliness. It is the type of book where a skeleton plot is arranged so a whole bunch of witty or just plain silly sequences can be attached to it. The success or failure of the book being determined by how many of those sequences work for the reader. For me, the answer was some but probably not quite enough although it was pleasantly diverting.
The thing is, I'm not a big fan of simple silliness. Giving a character a silly name (Sopworth Hammil) isn't really all that funny. I need cleverness with just a bit of satirical bite - that is to say, I need wit in what I read. To be fair, I think the author was trying for that a fair bit, but it didn't always work. When it did, it was very good - there is a sequence where "god" describes how he got that role by being granted three wishes by a genie which really sticks in my mind. It is also worth noting that this book would probably have been funnier when it was first published - topical references erode over time. I realise that this is a very minor work in terms of Broderick's output - perhaps I had better find a more major one.
The thing is, I'm not a big fan of simple silliness. Giving a character a silly name (Sopworth Hammil) isn't really all that funny. I need cleverness with just a bit of satirical bite - that is to say, I need wit in what I read. To be fair, I think the author was trying for that a fair bit, but it didn't always work. When it did, it was very good - there is a sequence where "god" describes how he got that role by being granted three wishes by a genie which really sticks in my mind. It is also worth noting that this book would probably have been funnier when it was first published - topical references erode over time. I realise that this is a very minor work in terms of Broderick's output - perhaps I had better find a more major one.