The Book of Dave: A Novel [Hardcover]

Will Self (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2006

When cabdriver Dave Rudman's wife of five years deserts him for another man, taking their only child with her, he is thrown into a tailspin of doubt and discontent. Fearing his son will never know his father, Dave pens a gripping text--part memoir, part deranged philosophical treatise, and part handbook of "the Knowledge" learned by all London cab drivers. Meant for the boy when he comes of age, the book captures the frustration and anxiety of modern life. Five hundred years later, the Book of Dave is discovered by the inhabitants on the island of Ham, where it becomes a sacred text of biblical proportion, and its author is revered as a mighty prophet.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Self, the provocative British raconteur who used the Tibetan Book of the Dead to map London (How the Dead Live, 2000) is taking another literary shot across his home city's bow. In his gleaming new puzzlebook, Self creates a dystopian future London, ruled by a cynosure of priests, lawyers and the monarchy. He invents Arpee, the musical language they speak that is based on a sacred text—The Book of Dave—which also serves, satirically, as the society's moral and legal foundation. And who is this deity named Dave? An embittered London cabbie from the distant past—the year 2000.As the book opens, the kingdom of Ingerland is ruled by the elite and ruthless PCO. (Self is riffing on the Public Carriage Office, London's transit authority.) People live according to The Book of Dave, which was recovered after a great flood wiped out London in the MadeinChina era. Flashing back more than 500 years, cabbie Dave Rudman types out his idiosyncratic, misogynist, bile-tinged fantasies while in a fit of antidepressant-induced psychosis and battling over the custody of his child, Carl. His screed becomes both a blueprint for a harsh childrearing climate (mummies and daddies living apart, with the kids splitting time between them) and a full-blown cosmology. As Self moves between eras, he divides the book between Dave's story and the story of the great Flying (slang in the future for "heresy"). The latter involves the appearance of the Geezer (prophet) on the island of Ham (Hampshire) in 508 A.D. (after the "purported discovery of the Book of Dave"), who claims to have found a second Book of Dave annulling the "tiresome strictures" of the first. He is imprisoned by the PCO and mangled beyond recognition, but, 14 years later, his son, Carl Dévúsh, travels from Ham to New London, determined to create a less cruel world that responds to the "mummyself" within. Self's invention of a future language (including dialect Mokni, which combines cabby slang, cockney and the Esperanto of graffiti—and, yes, a dictionary is provided) is wickedly brilliant, with surprising moments of childlike purity punctuating the lexicon's crude surface (a "fuckoffgaff" is a "lawyerly place," while "wooly" means sheep). Self is endlessly talented, and in crossbreeding a fantasy novel with a scorching satire of contemporary mores, he's created a beautiful monster of the future that feeds on the neurotic present—and its parents. (Nov.)
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From The New Yorker

In this tale of an embittered taxi-driver whose psychotic rantings become the creed of a blighted people hundreds of years after his death, Self unleashes his apparently boundless misanthropy on modern London, the origins of religion, and the postapocalyptic future. Dave Rudman, driven mad by divorce and ill-prescribed antidepressants, thinks he is God and writes a vitriolic screed, which he has printed on metal plates and buries in a garden. Discovered by the survivors of a catastrophic flood and adopted as a gospel, it demands the complete separation of mothers and fathers (children to spend exactly half the week with each). Switching between a narrative of Dave's unlucky life and the phonetically rendered "Mokni" speech of his wretched followers, Self achieves an elaborate vision of vicious superstition and hopeless struggle, but his insights never quite repay the effort of engaging with his stylistic pyrotechnics.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1st US Edition edition (November 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596911239
• ISBN-13: 978-1596911239
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dystopia and "revealed religion", February 25, 2007

By 

Yorgos "the cultural omnivore" (South Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Dave: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a wonderfullly mind-bending book that works on so many levels it would definitely reward a second reading. Its premise is pretty strange: in a post-apocalyptic England, turned into an achipelago by global warming, a brutal and backward society is ruled by a religion based on a holy text of "revealed truth," The Book of Dave. Fast-rewind to the present and it soon becomes clear that The Book is the psychotic rantings of a London cabbie of the same name, engraved on stainless steel plates and buried in his estranged wife's garden. The purpose of this insanity is to pass to his son "The Knowledge" of London streets, routes and points of interest that cabbies need to memorize to get their license. Intewoven with this is Dave's worldview, venomously warped by rage at the ex-wife, longing for his "Lost Boy," and the side-effects of a stew of mis-prescribed drugs.

The first chapter of Will Self's book, set in 522 AD (After Dave) was almost incomprehensible, even though I lived and studied in England for years and I am quite conversant with cockney and London lore. It is worth persevering, however. Slowly the realization dawns that many of the strange vocabulary and practices relate to taxis and their drivers. The ubiquitous holy (or "davine") greeting, rendered in horrible texting abbreviation, is "Ware2, guv?" Anyone who ever hailed a cab in London knows that these are the first words out of the driver's mouth. In the dystopian future these are words that connect one to Dave's sacred world. Priests are "Drivers," prayer is "intercom," wise and exalted people are addressed as "rearview," souls are "fares," heretics are "fliers." The last one took a while to decipher: in the present, fliers are people who take a cab to Heathrow to leave London, and they are by definition heretics, leaving behind the familiar, wondrous, endlessly interesting London.

The novel unfolds in 16 chapters that alternate between the dystopian future and the blighted present, skipping back and forth even within their own era. In the future there is rigid separation of the sexes, with the children spending exactly half a week with each parent (as Dave the cabbie prescribed in his Book). The routes and sights ("runs and points") are endlessly recited by rote, even though they have disappeared for centuries, although some of them are being rebuilt in grotesque caricature by people who have no idea what they looked like. The people are kept in brutal servitude for the benefit of King Dave III and his Lawyers (feudal landlords) by a combination of religious doctrine, a cadre of Drivers (state-sanctioned priests), Examiners, spies, and armed thugs. That the rantings of the demented cabbie become the holiest of holies and the entire basis of a society is exactly the point: Dave's steel-engraved bile served the purpose of the rulers, but then, as the author redundantly points out, they would have used whatever else was at hand and fit the need.

In the parallel narratives, all is not doom and gloom. Dave recovers his sanity; in 510 AD a new prophet ("geezer")preaches a gospel of love and freedom, based on the idea that Dave wrote his Book when he was "off his rocker," then wrote another book repudiating the first and prescribing kindness and reconciliation. According to this new gospel men and women can live together and use the fruits of their own labor. Of course the geezer threatens the social order and is swiftly sent to the Tower of New London. His grisly fate is unclear until his son sets out to find him and understand the nature of his dad's heresy ("flying"). I won't give away any more, but only say that along the way Will Self's pessimism burns through like a smoldering fire.

As one reads along, things become clear. American readers will still find it hard going. The many twists and turns of the plots and subplots take us through present and future London in all its bewildering detail. There are side trips along the way to take in the bigoted world of cabbies, the crazy antics of militant fathers' rights activists, private detectives, loan sharks, etc. In the future, we get vivid descriptions of the priests, inquisitors, torturers, executioners, informers (CCTV men), taxmen and flunkies as well as some strange, genetically engineered talking pig/ cow/ human creatures called motos. Parallels between the two worlds are piled up with abandon; I'm sure I only got a fraction of all the allusions and references, but I will read the novel again.

In all, this is a strange and wonderful book, one well worth reading and rereading. The New Yorker reviewer talks about Will Self's boundless misanthropy. I know from experience that there is plenty of that in the UK, but I would disagree in this case. A misanthrope would not have created such a vivid world, in all its mostly repulsive detail, leavened with flashes of heroism, goodness and nobility. For all their sadness and futility, Will Self's flawed heroes, current and future, struggle for sanity and kindness. That they mostly fail is not due to misanthropy; I take it as a cautionary tale.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pinnacle of Accomplishment -- Compelling, Brilliant, December 20, 2006

By 

DC Holm "booktime" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Dave: A Novel (Hardcover)

The novel is long and complicated. It necessitates consulting with a glossary of invented words and a dictionary. Prepare for an aggressively dark narrative of misogyny, religious repression, domestic violence.

There is enough portrayal of cruelty and bigotry, mental illness and torture to evoke intense revulsion and disgust, a hallmark of this British writer's fiction.

The Book of Dave is sometimes as off-putting as Self's five previous novels but arrives at a pinnacle of accomplishment.

The plot is sturdy and the prose is voluptuous. The emotional range he hones is symphonic, retaining the initial simple notes of rage of the character.

Dave Rudman, a balding London taxi driver undergoing a nasty divorce, holds a lot of rage. His wife, Michelle, wrings him over a custody battle over their son, Carl.

He expresses his rants and buries them.

His denied fatherhood is a mortal blow, unsoothed by the "Fathers First" support group Dave attends.

Alternating with these chapters is a narrative that unfolds hundreds of years later. A flood has devastated London and its surrounding areas. The most vital relic from the antediluvian world? The "Book of Dave," exhumed long ago and worshiped as a bible with Dave as its god.

On one outer island, Hams, residents live a primitive farming life. Their theocracy is organized around their deity's ordained sacred scriptures: 21st-century cabbie lore and child-custody laws.

In daily prayers, the Hamsters pay fervent thanks to Dave. They chant the names of extinct London streets from obsolete cab-driving routes.

Men must live apart from women. Women are routinely abused and forced to do most of the work. Children religiously observe Changeover, spending half the week with their mothers and half with fathers.

Anyone who dares to transgress the scriptures risks a public trial followed by excruciatingly tortuous punishments.

No actual taxi cabs exist in this post-technological future world. There are, in fact, no wheels at all, except in the capital some distance away. There, a huge, Inquisition-like wheel of torture is used to punish heretics.

As a futuristic fantasy, Ham resembles Hundred Acre Wood more than "Blade Runner."

The contrast between Ham's primitive culture and Dave's current day London, with its "neuralgia of ceaseless communication," is part of the writer's larger point about the circular spiral of history.

Self's alternating chapters ingeniously show how fragile new civilizations are, constructed atop the past and never really advancing.

Dave daydreams about a great flood while stuck in traffic; stuck on their island, the Hamsters aspire to plastic fragments stamped "Made in China."

A brilliant work that incisively stirs, disturbs and enlightens. This is a book to have and to give. The prose alone is impeccable and lush.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read this year, June 25, 2007

By 

E. Walton (Eagle, ID United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Dave: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm a speed reader. When I encountered this book, I found myself forced to slow WAY down, even to read out loud, so I could understand the dialect in which the dystopian sections are written (kind of like a text-messaged cockney). As a Mormon, I found the treatment of revealed religion had a special resonance with me--the buried plates were such a clever twist. Overall, I felt like I left this book knowing more about the human condition than when I started, and I was also thoroughly entertained. I highly recommend The Book of Dave.