Customer Reviews

Are You Experienced?

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My girlfriend gave me this book as a humorous alternative to the dark stuff that I normally read, so I was expecting some in-your-face, smart-aleck pulp that a reviewer somewhere thought was trying to be funny. I started reading it at 11 o'clock at night, and I have to say that by the time I finished it, four hours later in the wee small hours, I was pleasantly shocked to discover that it was actually very funny in a cynical sense, and overall a deeper and more insightful read than I had first expected.

Some have called the storyline pointless and the characters 2-dimensional, but that is the point of the story: it satirises the latest PC fad. Anyone who says it is pure pulp cannot have read the part where Dave encounters a Reuters journalist, a passage where the author's intent for the novel is laid bare. With Liz and Dave, Sutcliffe accurately depicts the two main types of traveller swarming into the lesser regions of the world: the self-obsessed type who make out like everything is 'karmic' and 'spiritual' without the first clue of what that means, and the type who travel and 'experience poverty' just because everyone else is doing it and they can put it on their CV. It is very fitting that, whilst following Dave around India, we learn next to nothing about the country, and likewise, with Liz on a spiritual quest, we get about as spiritual as who she's sleeping with. Add to this some very accurate portrayals of travelling (such as how when you return home, everything seems strange), and some weird and wonderful (and morally corrupt) supporting characters, not to mention all manner of bizarre situations, and it's a riot.

Don't believe the nay-sayers. You can read this novel as pulp if you want, because the humour and free-flowing storyline make it truly difficult to put down, but between the lines it is a dark and bitter diatribe to the culture of the traveller. Only the ending with its 'nosy-parker' humour lets the story down. But it shows that none of the travellers learned anything from travelling, despite their claims to the contrary. So it succeeds in its point. So buy it, now.

If you were ever a teenager involved in backpacking and trekking; a flower child in search of peace, love, and spiritual fulfillment; a traveler to India adventurous enough to go off the regular tourist trails; or the parent of any of these, you will love this wickedly satirical tale of two callow 19-year-olds who decide to spend a few months of their gap year backpacking around India in search of experience and enlightenment. With so many summaries already on the site, I'll forgo writing another one, but this book, unlike so many others that critics tout as "hilarious," but which regular readers find only mildly amusing at best, really IS hilarious!

As Dave and Liz smugly "experience India," we see how shallow their involvement is, how much they are acting and trying on roles to see if they fit, how much this trip is a way to avoid boredom, and how, lemming-like, they do what everyone else does, staying in the same hostels, following the same itinerary, and searching for "meaning" in outrageously off-the-wall activities, the chief attraction of which is that they take place in a foreign country.

Sutcliffe does not hold back in his satire, but he is not mean-spirited. The reader can easily imagine that this novel evolves from some of Sutcliffe's own amusing experiences or those of some of his friends. He is laughing with, rather than laughing at. Most readers will probably not have pursued enlightenment in the extreme ways that Dave and Liz do, but most of us will see ourselves at nineteen mirrored in their naivete and gullibility. In laughing at them, we are also laughing at ourselves. Mary Whipple

When you consider how many novels of today are hyped and basically lifeless, this wonderful novel refreshes the soul and makes you realise that being a writer is the greatest calling known to man (or maybe the second after the task of bedding Liz, the ravishing-but-nauseatingly selfish heroine)of the book. I won't summarise the story,as other reviewers have already done this, but I WILL say that as soon as I'd read 'Are You Experienced', I bought another five copies and sent them to my best friends. The book is brilliantly written, wry, with utterly convincing dialogue and a savage line in satirising the selfishness and pretentions of privileged young twits who are too full of their own trite perspective on the world and think being young is de facto an achievement. Dave, the hero, is one of them in a sense but much nicer and also able to see thru himself. And don't we all know a girl like Liz - who thinks being a self-centred cow is okay if you're gorgeous. I was 40 years old when I read this and perhaps the best thing I can say about this book is that it made me immensely glad that I wasn't 24 any more! By the way, there is a great episode where Dave gets some dreadful tummy upset: a passage which manages to be highly amusing while not overly obnoxious to read. My only small complaint is that the author never tells us what Liz actually LOOKS like! I could have done with knowing. Mr Sutcliffe, you are a wonderful writer; I can't wait for your next book!!

Very funny and witty from the start. Personally, as someone who has travelled her fair share, this book made me laugh endlessly as it picks on the pretentious attitude of some travellers. The 'I'm travelling to find myself' spiel that they spout on about when you find yourself sharing a hostel room with one of them. I thought this book was to the point and should be shoved in the face of anyone who thinks they can just mosey on down to India and gorp at the locals! Good story, good laugh, well worth the read!

This book was a great read. I bought it at St. Pancras Stationin London and got so caught up in it I missed my train -- twice. It'slaugh-out-loud funny and a poke in the eye for all those backpackers wrapped up in their own self-importance as they venture from suburbia to the far-flung corners of the world to try and find themselves. As someone who has lived as a settler in Africa all my life, this book was a great satire on some of the objectionalble people from Europe and the States who believe they know everything about Africa because they have spent a couple of months there. Don't get me wrong some are very nice people -- others are certainly not -- but anyone who claims they understand Africa after a few months on the tourist trail (which they think is the real Africa because only backpackers go on it) is delusional. I have lived in Africa for 30 years and I do not understand it. Brilliant passage when the main character meets a Reuters journalist which goes right to the heart of Sutcliffe's message. A must read.

Like many British school leavers from his country, Dave feel heshould go somewhere dangerous before he starts at university. India isnot his choice though, he merely follows Liz who he hopes to have sex with. What follows is a well-written satire on Brit backpackers in India. Dave suffers from the heat, gets stoned...etc. etc. I guess it wasn't too awfully difficult to write this book - just go round a Students' Union in England and tape the stories people tell: Everything was "amazing" of course, and the travellers come back a completely different person - though what exactly makes it amazing and in what the character change consists of would be asking too much. Sutcliffe is excellent on the pointlessness and shallowness of it all.

Somewhere in the middle of the book, Sutcliffe has Dave meet a journalist who tells him: "it's not hippies on a spiritual mission who come here any more, just morons on a poverty-tourism adventure holiday. Your kind of travel is all about low horizons dressed up as open-mindedness." Dave with all his would-be cynicism is a perfect example of this class of travelers.

Some cheap shots cost the book its fifth star. If you loved to hate the post-hippies in Alex Garland's "The Beach", you should go for "Are you experienced?"

The book is about traveling, so I supposed it`s fitting that it works very well as a travel read. I read the bulk of it on a 13 hour flight to Japan, and it set the stage well for my travels.

Sutcliffe does a very good job of expressing the feeling I often have when I`m done with a trip: that I`m glad I did it, but I don`t know if I would want to go through the whole experience again.

That said, much of the book seemed like it was missing something. The story is told from a first person perspective, which generally gives the reader a wonderful insight into the narrator. However, in this case, I never felt like I truely understood the narrator. Close at times, but never quite fully there.

William Sutcliffe's cynical approach fits the generation he describes perfectly, and Dave, the lead character could be a spokesperson for doomed youth. Bored in his gap year, Dave undertakes the trip of a lifetime- into his newfound friend and co-traveller Liz's pants. Unfortunately to get there Dave has to follow Liz to hot, frightening India with all it's menacing beggars, indigestable food, dysentry and worst of all, a plethora of hippie travellers all mith mind-crushingly dull "India Theories". Unlike his fellow travellers looking for spiritual epiphany and life-changing experiences, Dave is perfectly honest about what he wants to get out of his trip to India- as much sex as possible with Liz and a cute little paragraph for his CV. Unfortunately it's clear from the start that Liz and Dave have a clear conflict of interest, as Liz begins to reach Nirvana precisely at the time Dave discovers the best thing about India is the quality cheap dope. But as Sutcliffe's darkly humorous story evolves, it's clear that neither one of them has any real interest in "challenging their cultural assumptions" as we learn about Liz's seedy encounter with Yoga and Dave's wretched but hilarous experience with a lamb burger. Whats clearest of all is the ethnocentric attitudes of the main characters- Sutcliffe paints a picture of the youth of Britain abroad perfectly. And the scene with the Reuters journalist is priceless, I'd buy the book for this alone!

This work comes charging out of the gates: the first of the three sections is hilarious and right on target. If you've done a bit of traveling, you will recognize these characters that Sutcliff paints with such economy and wicked accuracy. At some point in the middle of the novel, however, everything loses focus: I have a feeling that the author changed his mind as to who the narrator was and what he was going to take from his experiences. Thus adrift, the novel finally closes down with a whimper. Nonetheless, a very quick, very light read and at a good price: check it out if you've traveled. For those who've not (remember, "it's not compulsory"), borrow it (no need to buy).

I was on a surfing trip in Indonesia, and while recuperating from a nasty motorcycle wreck, some kids came by my hut and sold me this book. It turned out to be one of the funniest books I've ever read, and I hope Amazon will carry his first novel. It seems that all the college kids in Europe and Australia decide during their college career that it would somehow be a great idea to visit the third world, in a complete reversal of American kids' norm of visiting Europe. The book parodies the motives of the students, and explores the facts of life in developing countries. Much of this book is either subtley or shockingly true, and was so applicable to my trip to Indo that I stopped writing in my journal and now when people ask me about my trip, I just tell them to read this book.

READ THIS BOOK !!