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I n Will Self's novel, The Book of Dave (Viking, £17.99), the rising seas have flooded Britain, turning it into an archipelago of primitive communities whose peoples worship a misogynistic, homophobic god named Dave.
Men live on one side of the villages, women on the other, and children spend exactly half the week on each side. Women - who must pull the ploughs - are "boilers" (meaning they've given birth and aren't worth having sex with) or "opares" (they haven't given birth and are worth having sex with). Fathers educate their sons in the arcane wisdom of the "Knowledge" and they all speak a kind of modified mockney, liberally laced with the shorthand of text messaging (men greet each other with the phrase "Where2guv"). They do this because in 2000 Dave Rudman - a London cabbie, whose wife left him for a tossy media type,
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Will Self’s latest novel might make a better short story, says tim auld
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depriving him of access to their son - decided to vanity publish one copy of his autobiographical diary-cum-rant against humanity and bury it in his wife's garden in Hampstead. Five hundred years hence, the book is dug up and turned into the cornerstone of a new religion.
It's a mouthwatering conceit, offering Self great scope to attack organised religion and wallow in the grime of contemporary London. And he sets about his task with enviable enthusiasm, his linguistic agility to the fore.
But what might be exhilarating for the writer can grow wearisome to the reader, and one longs for the hand of a tough editor. Perhaps even one who'd dare suggest that a 477 page novel might make a better short story. Easier said than done, though. 
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POSTED JUNE 13, 2006
Last week: Alentejo Blue
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