"Kill Your Friends" - John Niven
June 30th 2008 08:40
Kill Your Friends – John Niven
It was with a sense of quiet desperation I picked up this debut novel from John Niven (originally from a few miles away from where I grew up), expecting perhaps yet another second-rate Irvine Welsh churning out satirical nonsense which would make even Ben Elton weep. How wrong I was, as this has in fact turned out to be the best novel I’ve read this year and certainly the best debut since Mark Haddon’s “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”.
Niven has written an exceptionally dark but hilariously funny satirical take on the music business, but unlike past offerings of Ben Elton which have tackled similar issues, the writing and characterisation really set this novel apart, and Niven surely has created literatures best villain since Patrick Bateman. It is obvious that this novel is hugely influenced by Bret Ellis-Easton’s own bloody satire “American Psycho” and while it is certainly not in quite the same league, late 90’s Britain proves a novel change of pace from 80’s Wall Street.
The novel deals with Steven Stelfox, our “hero”, who is an A&R executive with a major record label and the book documents a year in his life, as he sinks further into a paranoid, psychotic state surrounded by drugs, sex and not too much music. John Niven actually was an A&R man in the late nineties and its this semi fictional memoir form that’s perhaps the most enjoyable aspect to Kill Your Friends. Britpop’s at its peak, Girl Power’s just kicked off, and New Labour’s election victory is only a few months away. Niven deftly uses ironic retrospection; the reader cannot help but be amused by Stelfox’s opinion that Be Here Now is Oasis’ masterpiece, that Paranoid Android will end Radiohead’s career, and the description of Tony Blair as ‘that Labour guy.’ Stelfox’s openly racist/sexist/increasingly psychotic views are coupled with the fact that he openly admits to not knowing how to do his job, putting any success or failure down to luck, and these qualities have us all delighting as he is constantly on the verge of a comeuppance which never seems to come.
“Kill Your Friends” is a jaw-dropping, frequently repugnant but mostly hilarious debut novel and I highly recommend it.
It was with a sense of quiet desperation I picked up this debut novel from John Niven (originally from a few miles away from where I grew up), expecting perhaps yet another second-rate Irvine Welsh churning out satirical nonsense which would make even Ben Elton weep. How wrong I was, as this has in fact turned out to be the best novel I’ve read this year and certainly the best debut since Mark Haddon’s “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”.
The novel deals with Steven Stelfox, our “hero”, who is an A&R executive with a major record label and the book documents a year in his life, as he sinks further into a paranoid, psychotic state surrounded by drugs, sex and not too much music. John Niven actually was an A&R man in the late nineties and its this semi fictional memoir form that’s perhaps the most enjoyable aspect to Kill Your Friends. Britpop’s at its peak, Girl Power’s just kicked off, and New Labour’s election victory is only a few months away. Niven deftly uses ironic retrospection; the reader cannot help but be amused by Stelfox’s opinion that Be Here Now is Oasis’ masterpiece, that Paranoid Android will end Radiohead’s career, and the description of Tony Blair as ‘that Labour guy.’ Stelfox’s openly racist/sexist/increasingly psychotic views are coupled with the fact that he openly admits to not knowing how to do his job, putting any success or failure down to luck, and these qualities have us all delighting as he is constantly on the verge of a comeuppance which never seems to come.
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