Blind Faith - Ben Elton (2007)

Ben Elton's Blind Faith might very well be a minor masterpiece. In many ways it's an update of 1984, with dashes of the Spanish Inquisition thrown in for piquancy. It dwells on themes which seem to obsess Elton - fame, notoriety, the nature of celebrity, human stupidity, the mixed blessing of the Internet and of technology in general, and so on. He's explored these before in, for instance, Chart Throb and Dead Famous. Blind Faith is darker than those books but still manages to be funny, no mean trick.

Here's a quote that stuck with me, and one that summarizes neatly the setting of the near-future dystopia and how we got there:

"Almost anything that we might wish to read could be located on the net instantly and traced straight back to us. The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of police surveillance. Now, as you know, cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography."


In the Britain of the novel, privacy itself is seditious. One is expected to post to the Internet constantly the most intimate details of one's life, preferably with video. Failure to do so risks accusations of "thinking you're better than me," and inciting mob violence. Any complaint about another's behaviour, no matter how small the complaint or how outrageous the behaviour, is considered an attempt to infringe on someone's right of self-expression. It's political correctness carried to farcical extremes. And we can see the hints of it already. In American today, "elite" seems to be a bad word unless applied to military units. The slope is getting slippery.

The plot is not revolutionary (pun intended). Our unhappy hero begins a slow resistance to the oppression that he suffers under. He starts to rebel, and the weight of the state moves against him. He becomes something of an everyman hero. And, well, anything more would be a spoiler.

Be warned, this is not a happy book. Parts of it are very funny, but it is dark. It is an indictment of society today and a warning about where we might go. Is it a classic? Time will tell. Is it playing in the same league as 1984 and Brave New World? Difficult to say. But make no mistake, it is playing the same game.

Overall Grade: A

Inconceivable - Ben Elton (1999)

Inconceivable is the punny title of Ben Elton's book about a couple and their difficulty having children. One might not think that infertility is a subject rife with comedic potential, but in the sharp and sometimes cruel hands of Ben Elton it makes for a very funny book indeed.

The book is written as an almost epistolatory novel, although instead of letters it is told in alternating extracts from the journals being written by Sam and Lucy, the childless couple. It is a device which works pretty well, giving a "he said/she said" feel to the proceedings. Sam's entries are funny and have a distinct male voice. Lucy's entries are funny and have a distinctive voice, too, but I wonder if the voice is a little stereotypical rather than distinctively female. (The voice sounded plausible to me, but I'm not a female and by definition poorly equipped to judge ...)

The through line, of course, is the various ups and downs of trying to get pregnant. There is lots of material here from New Age suggestions to make love on sites of mystic power to the indignities necessary for the various modern medical techniques. Interweaving with that story are subplots concerning Sam's attempt to kickstart his writing career by writing about their problems, and Lucy's response to that.

Elton's style is sharp and biting, almost mean at times, with an earthy streak that crops up now and then. Those familiar with British television might recognize the names Blackadder, The Young Ones and The Thin Blue Line, shows for which he was a writer. That's not to say there aren't moments of tenderness in the book, far from it! He brings a sense of reality to the relationship between Sam and Lucy, which is tender but tense, a complex and conflicted affair.

The book was adapted into a screenplay and made into the movie Maybe Baby, which is a little ironic since that's what happened in the book itself. There's a sort of snake eating it's own tail sense to that. The movie was directed by Elton and stars the usual passle of folks, including Hugh Laurie of House fame. All of which is rather beside the point.

The point being that the book is quite good, not a deep and world shaking read, but funny and a little poignant at places and worth the time if you need a break from Proust or whatever magnum opus you are currently perusing.

Overall Grade: B+