His life has been a series of wrong turns, and he lashes out at others so that he doesn’t have to admit that the fault is all his. Dave sort of redeems himself at the end, but the notebooks he fills with crazy rantings during his episodes of mental collapse, are buried and then found 500 years later, when they are taken as Gospel. In my mind’s eye they resemble a cross between a pig, a person and a duck, with a fondness for wallowing in mud and swimming. In many ways, it’s a post-apocalyptic novel – the story veers between the present and the distant future, after a series of great floods reduced civilisation to ruins.

Even the two millennia of elapsed time that Self has allowed seem insufficient for this level of evolution, but there are hints within the text that the Motos might be products of some kind of genetic modification or design. Present and distant future interweaves, kind of pre- and post-apocalyptic vision of England (London), religious fanaticism, cancelling individuality, oppression, genetic engineering, lack of empathy, misogyny, violence, environmentalism, dark humour … what a mishmash! Self has a supernatural empathetic capacity that he uses here to give life to those Londoners otherwise dismissed. Five hundred years later, the Book of Dave is discovered by the inhabitants of Ham, the flooded remnants of London, where it becomes a sacred text of biblical proportion, and its author is revered as a mighty prophet. As I struggled with page after page of dialect I kept worrying whether it was me, have I become a lazy reader unable to give an intelligent book the attention it deserves, or has Will Self just gone a step too far?I think the same idea in many other hands could have easily been just silly and overdone, and would have ended up as just another of the hundreds of dystopia-type novels with their grand illusions. Initially Syz is thrilled, but soon things begin to fall apart, and the real world begins to seem less real.

Life is primitive on Ham, they look forward to the day they can be in Nu Lundun, and fear plays a large part in all. In fact, I had a lot of trouble with the unfamiliar British slang, although I probably pieced together most of it. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. But it is Will's fault that he cribbed (read: ransacked) Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, which I couldn't get through. He has a single copy of the book printed on metal plates and buries it in the garden of the house in Hampstead where Michelle lives with Cal and Carl.My thesis will also look at crime fiction and how boundaries between genres can be usefully breached in hybrid novels, for example China Mieville’s The City and The City. Dave regrets the content of his book, and attempts to dig it up from the Hampstead garden, but fails. As half of celebrated eighties duo Soft Cell, Dave Ball’s long career in music has been quite the ride – not least creating the instantly recognisable electronic sound that made ‘Tainted Love’ a massive hit around the world.