cover image Blow Job

Blow Job

Stewart Home. Serpent's Tail, $12.99 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-85242-548-7

""It was a fine afternoon for looting, arson and other forms of wanton destruction,"" Home writes in this gleefully violent, goofily lewd satire of revolutionary British politics, in which the opposing proponents of anarchism and fascism have more in common than they'd like to admit. Well-known in London as one of Brit lit's lesser, unwashed enfants terribles, Home (Slow Death) envisions a volatile near-future world of street fights, assassinations and bombings perpetrated by socially marginalized members of the No Future Party, the Anglo-Saxon Movement, the Church of Adolf Hitler and other underground factions whose terrorist tactics and Marxist rhetoric appeal to punks and proletariats on the dole. The plot follows try-anything bisexuals Mike Armilus, Steve Drummond and Swift Nick Carter as their constant quests for oral gratification and revolutionary mayhem plunge them into the midst of youth violence in London's slums. Although Home's characters knock Martin Amis (their cultural taste runs more to John Waters), admirers of Amis's patently British nastiness will enjoy Home's fast-paced chronicle of sleazy sex and anarchy. (May)