DBC Pierre Ludmila's Broken English (2006)
Still aglow from Vernon God Little and having regarded it as the greatest novel I'd ever read, I rushed out and bought a copy of this, Pierre's second novel, the day it hit the shops, or specifically the day it hit Waterstone's on Oxford Street. In fact I was so quick off the blocks that I found I'd bought a copy signed by the author without even meaning too. I guess I might even have met the man himself had I made it to Waterstone's before five in the evening, but Marian had decided we should make a day of it, like couples do, so it's probably a miracle that we actually made it to the store before closing time. Marian bought something from the self-help section, a book with a title like How to Better Manage Your Money or How to Not Spend Money on Shit You Don't Actually Need, something along those lines. It cost twenty quid, the irony of which was, as ever, lost on her.
In the wider world, Ludmila's Broken English met with a lukewarm reception as I recall, that difficult second book by someone with a lot to live up to, although it probably didn't help that most of the critics had apparently mistaken Vernon God Little for Tom Sharpe does Deliverance.
Ludmila, like her predecessor, is darkly comic, but with significantly less chance of anyone mistaking the gallow's humour for an episode of Filthy, Rich & Catflap. Also problematic, I would guess, would have been the broken English of the title, conjoined twins, now separated, respectively named Blair and Gordon, and blatantly based on Tony and Mr. Brown. Weirder still is that they seem to be the offspring of Ted Heath, although I suppose politically speaking it's not such a massive leap for something so obviously satirical. The novel is about their progress and eventual meeting with Ludmila, Blair's bride to be from the former Soviet Union and now inhabitant of a homeland comprising mainly grinding poverty and explosions. So the frame to which these characters find themselves bolted is frankly fucking ridiculous, and I know I found this aspect a bit of a stumbling block first time around, as I guess did most of the reviewers; but fifteen years later, sat in a country run by a man who has just told us to inject bleach, the sledgehammer elements of the narrative seem less obstructive. In fact they remind me a bit of Gogol, which is odd.
This time around, the parallels - not least Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - seem more like starting points than direct statements in and of themselves, although Pierre has Blair's woolly speech patterns down to a tee; and their exchanges are wonderfully horrible, Harold Pinter writing Hancock's Half Hour as one of Francis Bacon's more biologically distraught canvases. Everything is cutting and witty and darkly poetic, and this is probably part of the problem: lacking the grounding in directly experienced reality which clearly informed Vernon God Little, the narrative becomes relentless, even exhausting - a great idea which didn't quite fit the frame. A lawn dart tossed blindfold at Ludmila's Broken English will find ruthless, devastating prose every single time, but the whole lacks plasma, a written medium by which the material is delivered. My guess would be that the pressure of Vernon blowing up as it did could be to blame, but who knows?
Ludmila's Broken English is, roughly speaking, about neoliberalism and more or less everything that's been wrong with the world at least since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's argument is clearly stated with all due venom and without sermonising. It's only real failure is that it should have been better.
Still aglow from Vernon God Little and having regarded it as the greatest novel I'd ever read, I rushed out and bought a copy of this, Pierre's second novel, the day it hit the shops, or specifically the day it hit Waterstone's on Oxford Street. In fact I was so quick off the blocks that I found I'd bought a copy signed by the author without even meaning too. I guess I might even have met the man himself had I made it to Waterstone's before five in the evening, but Marian had decided we should make a day of it, like couples do, so it's probably a miracle that we actually made it to the store before closing time. Marian bought something from the self-help section, a book with a title like How to Better Manage Your Money or How to Not Spend Money on Shit You Don't Actually Need, something along those lines. It cost twenty quid, the irony of which was, as ever, lost on her.
In the wider world, Ludmila's Broken English met with a lukewarm reception as I recall, that difficult second book by someone with a lot to live up to, although it probably didn't help that most of the critics had apparently mistaken Vernon God Little for Tom Sharpe does Deliverance.
Ludmila, like her predecessor, is darkly comic, but with significantly less chance of anyone mistaking the gallow's humour for an episode of Filthy, Rich & Catflap. Also problematic, I would guess, would have been the broken English of the title, conjoined twins, now separated, respectively named Blair and Gordon, and blatantly based on Tony and Mr. Brown. Weirder still is that they seem to be the offspring of Ted Heath, although I suppose politically speaking it's not such a massive leap for something so obviously satirical. The novel is about their progress and eventual meeting with Ludmila, Blair's bride to be from the former Soviet Union and now inhabitant of a homeland comprising mainly grinding poverty and explosions. So the frame to which these characters find themselves bolted is frankly fucking ridiculous, and I know I found this aspect a bit of a stumbling block first time around, as I guess did most of the reviewers; but fifteen years later, sat in a country run by a man who has just told us to inject bleach, the sledgehammer elements of the narrative seem less obstructive. In fact they remind me a bit of Gogol, which is odd.
This time around, the parallels - not least Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - seem more like starting points than direct statements in and of themselves, although Pierre has Blair's woolly speech patterns down to a tee; and their exchanges are wonderfully horrible, Harold Pinter writing Hancock's Half Hour as one of Francis Bacon's more biologically distraught canvases. Everything is cutting and witty and darkly poetic, and this is probably part of the problem: lacking the grounding in directly experienced reality which clearly informed Vernon God Little, the narrative becomes relentless, even exhausting - a great idea which didn't quite fit the frame. A lawn dart tossed blindfold at Ludmila's Broken English will find ruthless, devastating prose every single time, but the whole lacks plasma, a written medium by which the material is delivered. My guess would be that the pressure of Vernon blowing up as it did could be to blame, but who knows?
Ludmila's Broken English is, roughly speaking, about neoliberalism and more or less everything that's been wrong with the world at least since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's argument is clearly stated with all due venom and without sermonising. It's only real failure is that it should have been better.
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