Pistache by Sebastian Faulks
Tuesday, 10 Oct 2006 14:20
No-one is safe from Faulks' pen...
Published by Hutchinson, out now, hardback, 103 pages, £10.99.
In a nutshell…
Eclectic. Satirical. Whimsical. Narcissistic. Pithy.
What's it all about?
Regular listeners to Radio 4's The Write Stuff will recognise the tongue in cheek ironic humour on hand in Pistache, with 56 literary figures the wrong end of some sharp parodies of their most famous works. The authors are spoofed individually by Faulks in brief chapters alongside a smattering of vaguely amusing caricatures. So we have a foul-mouthed Martin Amis describing his first day at Hogwarts and encountering a promiscuous Hermione Granger along the way, Alan Bennett getting bored with his regular diary and joining the SAS in Iraq, Enid Blyton updating the Famous Five as a chain-smoking crack anti-terror squad, DH Lawrence trying his hand at writing 18-30 holiday brochures and Harold Pinter's first draft of Are You Being Served is revealed.
Who's it by?
The dust cover for Pistache helpfully explains that Faulks was educated by Russian monks while working as a deckhand in Odessa and now lives happily in the Albanian lowlands. A regular contributor to the aforementioned Radio 4 show, the 53-year-old has penned seven novels, including The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray. A one-time literary editor of the Independent on Sunday and columnist for the Guardian and Evening Standard, Faulks entered the 21st century by deciding to focus solely on his writing career.
As an example…
"The world-renowned author stabbed his dagger-like debit card into the slot. 'Welcome to NatWest', barked the blushing grey light of the screen to the 42-year-old man. He had only two thoughts.
"NatWest is a perfect heptogram".
Dan Brown visits a cash machine, page 19
"She dwelt among untrodden ways/Beside the skateboard track/A b**** whom there were none to raise/And very few to smack.
"Inside the car park did I feel/The Thrust of my desire/And she I wanted turned my wheel/With looks and hands like fire."
William Wordsworth writes a Lucy rap, page 101
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster
Despite post-modern adaptations of Tristram Shandy making waves at the box office, Pistache is patently not suited for a big screen translation, although there's enough material in the book for a six-part TV series at least.
So is it any good?
Although at first a little bewildering, Pistache quickly settles into a succession of spot-on literary take-offs, with Faulks expertly capturing and aping the style of his unfortunate targets. Some pieces are admittedly more miss than hit, but no member of the English language literary pantheon is off-limits, with even William Shakespeare sent up (although his Basil Fawlty soliloquy is one of the weaker items).
The book definitely generates more laughs than it does confused frowns though, with the notion of some of the satirical angles worthy of a giggle by themselves, a la Dan Brown's mechanical description of his routine trip to the cash machine.
Of course, people will have to know a bit about the writers being spoofed to get anything out of the book, but the blend of modern and long-dead authors means that most readers will at least recognise a couple of novelists.
Pistache, which itself is a corruption of the words 'pastiche' and 'p***take', is marketed by the publishers as a book destined for the bedside table, and they're exactly right, its episodic nature lends itself perfectly to bedtime reading. Anyone attempting to read the book in one sitting, however, is likely to feel short-changed.
Ultimately not as funny as it thinks it is, Pistache deserves a bit of credit for its unashamed academic geekiness.
7/10
Matthew Champion
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