Customer Reviews

Donna and the Fatman

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Brett Easton Ellis and Quentin Tarantino have created a world of surrealism and dark humor in their work. I hadn't read a book with such subjects written by a woman until I discovered Helen Zahavi. Zahavi writes novels with a great deal of rage -- rage against abusive men, gang leaders, etc. She showed her full potential with Dirty Weekend -- one of my favorite novels -- and has taken a leap forward with Donna and the Fatman.

This novel, like Dirty Weekend, has a recurring theme: revenge. Set in the graphic life of London's criminal warfare, it introduces Henry -- also known as the fatman -- a notorious gang leader and Donna, the object of the fatman's desire, or rather, the object of the fatman's need to take of advantage of his power. Donna is obligated to free her boyfriend's debt by sleeping with Henry. At the last minute, however, she changes her mind. She steals money from Henry and escapes. But Henry, of course, won't let her get away with that, and that's when the story takes some interesting twists and turns.

Donna and the Fatman is a tour de force of dark humor and gorgeous language. I strongly urge you to read it!

Set in the bits of London that tourists don't usually see, this is a gangster story with a fairly shocking twist. It pits Donna -- young, wild and reckless -- against the Fatman, ruthless boss of a protection racket. When she humiliates him and runs off with one of his boys, he's remorseless in his pursuit, and wreaks terrible vengeance on them both. Although very violent and at times quite dark, it's stylishly written and full of sharp dialogue. If you like revenge stories, you'll love this book.

This book is terrible. For some inexplicable reason, various reviews have equated it with the work of Martin Amis (not nearly as literate or clever), Brett Easton Ellis (not nearly as satirical or dark), Irvine Welsh (not nearly as original or funny or human), and Quentin Tarantino (not nearly as ironic or funny). The plot is fairly simple, a young women (for unclear reasons) makes the aquaintence of an aging, overweight London loanshark and his tiny crew. There's a lot of dancing around as the fatman attempts to establish power (via money and sex) over Donna and she tries to remain whole.

It's sort of a revenge fantasy type book, but the motivations are never established properly, and the charcters are all ciphers, so it's impossible to ever really care what they do to eachother. Most of all though, the book is just plain boring! For those who think this is a "London mob story", well yes, there is a lot of driving around London, and the cast are mostly criminials who all speak in the same clipped, laconic banter, but that's about it. If you want a real London underworld tale, check out JJ Conolly's Layer Cake.