Books Paperback – 14 Nov 2013

Richard Anger is, well, angry. Owner of the "last little bookshop in town" he is both saddened and enraged by the state of the publishing industry. His girlfriend has left him for another man, his profits are non- existent and he is drinking too much. He is attempting to relax on a trip to Corfu when a tourist falls over and dies, while reading the manuscript of a new novel by Gary Sayles. Also present is Professor of Neurology Lauren Furrows, who begins to investigate an unknown neurological condition called SNAPS. Richard and Lauren join up to ask the question - can bad fiction actually kill you?

This is a clever and controversial read, in which the stories of Richard and Lauren join with those of other characters; bestselling author Sayles himself, his wife Amy and performance artists Zeke and Pippa. In a sense this reminded me of Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson, in that it looks at some pretty serious issues and wraps them in a light hearted, comedy storyline. Do the bestsellers available on supermarket shelves really represent what people want to read? Is there still a place for individualistic bookshops? Does serious literature still matter? Of course, the story itself is a fun read and the characters, especially those of Lauren and Richard Anger, work really well. However, it is obvious that, in these changing times, everyone who loves reading is worried about the changing state of publishing, the e-book revolution and the loss of bookshops, and this novel voices those concerns very cleverly.

Can bad books kill? It certainly looks like it, when several readers of the new Gary Sayles novel drop dead, their brains apparently fatally damaged by his vapid, cliché-ridden prose. Richard Anger, hard-drinking proprietor of the last independent bookshop in town, decides to do something about it, as does Lauren Furrows, Professor of Neurology at Birmingham University. Also drawn into the fray are Pippa and Zeke, conceptual artists well-aware that all art means nothing. Not forgetting Amy, Sayles's wife, who increasingly finds herself sidelined by her writer-husband's ever-swelling ego.

This is a funny book - not just witty, but laugh-out-loud funny. If - as seems more than probable - it is a roman a clef, the clef isn't buried far beneath the surface. Anyone who has read more than a couple of books, or has had an eye on the best-seller lists, will be perfectly well-aware of the real-world model of Gary Sayles, author of mindless pap for people who don't know any better. Clear, too, are the media types who hype whatever will sell to `people who read': not to be confused with `readers', that discerning sort who read to be moved, affected, changed, by what they read; and the "conceptual artists", representatives of the breed of YBA - Young British Artists - whose only aim is to shock, while disseminating product, rather than trying to produce work of real artistic merit and lasting artistic value.

Despite being all of 192 pages, the book felt much shorter. The story zips along nicely, filling in the background to the characters while pushing the plot ever closer to its ludicrous dénouement. This is one of the funniest books you're likely to read, and is one of the best books of the year so far.

This is a book about the value of books. It is something of a polemic based around a single idea - that popular bland fiction is bad for us while smart intelligent fiction is good. Hill offers this up with deft Swiftian maneuvers which have an entertainment value that overrides the otherwise in-cohesive plot elements and one-note feel. The book is, ironically, populist in so far as it is eminently and easily readable.

Great book. It's a lovely, funny story combined with a vitriolic manifesto against the excesses of the publishing industry, which routinely hypes mediocre books. Not very good authors are heavily promoted (with hyperbolic 'reviews' from big names who have been tossed a thousand quid for a couple of lines of lies) because they match some profile (pretty/quirky/very young/very old/etc, etc) that qualifies them to get onto a TV programme to give a plug. Charlie Hill satirises all of this beautifully (especially on page 162). It ought to be on the Booker shortlist, but of course it won't be because the luvvies in the publishing industry are all mates with people on the judging panel and they've all already decided what's going to be there.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that bestselling writers are talentless cheesemongers and cynical fakers, especially the sub-Hornby authors, those who heaved up from the lowest gutter of Hell the ‘male confessional’ novel. The readers of these novels need saving from themselves. They need an injection of dark, transgressive cult literature to raise their collective blood pressure and bust the suffocating membranes of their mediocre, junk-cultural lives.

Unknown

These aren’t my opinions but those of Richard Anger, indie bookseller, bilious bibliophile, experimental short story writer and protagonist of Charlie Hill’s smart, entertaining and necessary new novel Books.

At the outset we meet Anger on holiday in Corfu, where in a café he catches sight of the lovely Lauren and is instantly drawn. Any chance of Anger and Lauren making a connection is scotched when another woman keels over dead in the café. Anger notices that she’s been reading a rubbish novel by rubbish novelist Gary Sayle, bestselling author of mediocrity-fellating male confessionals and Cheesemonger General. Anger, whose bile has been on a brisk simmer for years, remarks that it’s hardly surprising that a Sayle could bore you to death.

Back in Birmingham, Lauren, a Professor of Neurology realizes that the spontaneous death in Corfu was an incidence of SNAPS (Spontaneous Neural Atrophy Syndrome), her specialist subject, and duly tracks down Richard Anger. As an awkward friendship between them develops, Richard and Lauren between them realize that Sayle’s new novel The Grass is Greener is so bad it does induce SNAPS. If its publication isn’t stopped, they will be a massacre.Read more ›