IT'S WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED
Sean Hughes, IT'S WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED
Raunchy, irreverent and intermittently amusing, this rambling black comedy tells the unlikely story of a 30-something London slacker with a clandestine second life. Shea Hickson may confess his postadolescent discontent with all the self-aware self-indulgence of a Nick Hornby character, but he justifies his hazy existence by his secret participation as "Little John" in an anti-celebrity underground conspiracy out of a Ben Elton satire. When his father, a popular BBC-TV weatherman, commits suicide, Shea has something in his life to take seriously other than culture jamming for the mysterious "Robin Hood," his contact in the guerrilla organization. His father's diary reveals a secret life of his own, and Shea decides to track down the people in it, who are code-named the Sun, the Wind, the Clouds and El Niño. Hughes, a popular British stand-up comedian, produces torrents of one-liners and even scattered satiric invective, but no cohesive plot. As Shea explores his father's past, from radical lefty university days to compromised media career, he realizes that the old man's sins are going to be visited on his sons. Shea, his brother, and even a mysterious half-brother in Australia are in imminent danger. For all the Martin Amis–style black humor and bad sex, the final, telegraphed twist to Hughes's talky satire about the chattering classes can't unite its disparate voices. (Mar.)
Forecast: Hughes is a bestselling author in England, but his celebrity status in the U.K. won't help the book much here, and the novel's flaws probably will keep its sales from being what Hughes would have wanted.
closeDetailsReviewed on: 02/26/2001
Genre: Fiction
Open Ebook - 288 pages - 978-0-7432-1571-8
Raunchy, irreverent and intermittently amusing, this rambling black comedy tells the unlikely story of a 30-something London slacker with a clandestine second life. Shea Hickson may confess his postadolescent discontent with all the self-aware self-indulgence of a Nick Hornby character, but he justifies his hazy existence by his secret participation as "Little John" in an anti-celebrity underground conspiracy out of a Ben Elton satire. When his father, a popular BBC-TV weatherman, commits suicide, Shea has something in his life to take seriously other than culture jamming for the mysterious "Robin Hood," his contact in the guerrilla organization. His father's diary reveals a secret life of his own, and Shea decides to track down the people in it, who are code-named the Sun, the Wind, the Clouds and El Niño. Hughes, a popular British stand-up comedian, produces torrents of one-liners and even scattered satiric invective, but no cohesive plot. As Shea explores his father's past, from radical lefty university days to compromised media career, he realizes that the old man's sins are going to be visited on his sons. Shea, his brother, and even a mysterious half-brother in Australia are in imminent danger. For all the Martin Amis–style black humor and bad sex, the final, telegraphed twist to Hughes's talky satire about the chattering classes can't unite its disparate voices.
Reviewed on: 02/26/2001
Genre: Fiction
Open Ebook - 288 pages - 978-0-7432-1571-8
