I wonder if the ever present Security Guard let my book sit there long enough to be collected by an unsuspecting lunchtime visitor to Market Town in Newcastle's west end?
This is a standard kind of spiel about the book...
"The book takes place
in different parts of Los Angeles, US. The date is never actually specified,
but various clues suggest it is set in the near future. Mostly the story takes
place in the centre of Hollywood. The book depicts the differences between
different social groups in America, from rich people with guards like Bruce
Delamitri to poorer people Wayne and Scout.
The protagonist, Bruce
Delamitiri, is an artist who works in the motion picture industry. Many people
in the US think that, by making these movies, Bruce makes killing cool.
Numerous characters throughout the book imply that he encourages everyone who's
watching these movies to kill for fun. Bruce, on the other hand, defends
himself by telling everyone that he doesn’t think he encourages anyone to do
anything. He says that there has always been violence but humans are not like
robots, seeing something on the screen does not necessarily make us want to do
it ourselves ( p. 13 "people get up from the movie theatre or the TV and do
what they just saw"). He also claims that he is just showing existing
violence. Unfortunately for Bruce, Wayne and Scout (a pair of psychopaths known
in the media as the "Mall Murderers") have formulated a plan to hold
him hostage and have him publicly announce that his movies are responsible for
their crimes so they can avoid the death penalty (Wayne has a lengthy speech
giving examples of how in America it is possible to be guilty and innocent at
the same time.) As the novel progresses, Bruce and a critically injured Brooke
Daniels are joined inside his house by his wife and daughter and a TV camera
crew. The siege reaches its climax as Wayne holds a ratings monitor and
announces on live TV that he will spare the hostages if everyone stops watching
the siege in the next few minutes - however, this does not happen and he begins
firing as the LAPD begin a frantic attempt to subdue him. Many of the
characters die in the ensuing violence and the epilogue of the story reveals
grim details as to how all the survivors have found a way of escaping
responsibility for the tragedy using varying routes from lawsuits and finding
religion to making documentaries which explicitly blame everyone else. The book
ends with the line "No one has taken responsibility" — echoing an
earlier rant by Bruce that we have created a blame free society in which any
problem or shortcoming can be blamed on others rather than accepting
responsibility for our own actions."
Like all Elton's books you can hear his characters speaking like a particular set of british comics he channels and the social comment is at the heart of the book... this is not as good as 'Gridlock' but they are all fun to read and watch unfold... enjoy!!
If you found 'Popcorn' read it, pass it on!!
