Kill Your Friends: A Novel (P.S.) [Paperback]

John Niven (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 30, 2008 | Series: P.S.

AS the twentieth century breathes its very last, with Britpop at its zenith, twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through London’s music industry. Blithely crisscrossing the globe in search of the next megahit—fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine—Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of self-gratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he’s going to salvage his sagging career is by taking the idea of “cutthroat” to murderous new levels.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With the record industry in turmoil, this thoroughly twisted roman a clef from a former A&R insider couldn't seem timelier. Set in 1997, this debut novel follows the loathsome and morally bankrupt 27-year-old Steven Stelfox as he curses, drinks and snorts his way through a cutthroat career. Crass and bitter, Steven despises everything that originally inspired him, and as the bills pile up from his various illicit habits and ventures, he tries in vain to find the "next big thing" so he can secure another bundle of money. Satirizing Big Music, the novel brims with self-evident truths--as Steven explains, he usually only hits one in every 10 acts, but even that allows him to do better than most. As Steven's arrogance precariously struggles against a healthy dose of paranoia, he faces his ultimate nightmare: he might actually have to sober up, do some work and break out a decent record by a decent act. This is not for the easily offended, but readers with at least a slightly deranged bent will have a ball. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

This debut novel takes a withering look at the British music business in the late 1990s, during the hedonistic last gasp of a dying industry. Steven Stelfox is an A & R man with a major label who is desperately searching for his next hit—when he isn’t inhaling Bloody Marys, doing massive quantities of cocaine, or watching porn. He’s all but given up on the angry black rapper Rage, who is working on his “concept” album; instead, he’s focused on a group of Spice Girls wannabes, “the worst sort of sink-estate, single-mother, benefit-fraud trash imaginable.” And their music? “The biggest insult to humanity since a roomful of Nazis first cooed over the blueprints for Auschwitz.” Contemptuous of musicians, the public, and, most of all, any colleagues who show signs of working hard, Steven prepares to save himself with a murderously ambitious plan to be named the head of A & R. Niven, who spent 10 years working in the music industry, uses his insider knowledge and a racist, misogynistic lead character to produce a very dark, viciously funny novel. --Joanne Wilkinson

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (December 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061690619
• ISBN-13: 978-0061690617
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #645,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Winner! April 28, 2009

By The_Fifer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Imagine a character so completely depraved, degenerated and perverted that he makes Hannibal Lecter seem like a Sunday school teacher. Now imagine that character fueled by a mountain of cocaine and an ocean of vodka. Now take away any sensitivity he may have learned for others of a different race, gender, physical capability, social class, postal code or sexual preference. Make him believe that there is nothing so important as the pursuit of money, put him in a nice suit, give him an expense account and turn him loose on the world without a modicum of care about the consequences of his actions to himself or others.

Now if I told you that you were going to read a novel centered on such a character, you might expect it to be a horror novel, or a thriller, maybe a mystery or police procedural. You would probably not expect that it would be the funniest thing you've read in years.

I will caution you here: if you don't think humor can possibly mix with buckets of blood, vomit, urine, feces and semen, or if you couldn't possibly laugh where there is blatant bigotry, or if wretched excess offends you to the point where you lose your sense of humor, this might not be the book for you.

If, however, you're possessed of a strong stomach and aren't easily offended, you're in for a treat.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, acidic, vastly entertaining April 22, 2009

By Aspi Havewala

Format:Paperback

There are lot of details woven into Niven's story. We get great insights into how talent is scouted, coaxed, cajoled and "discovered". In a deeply amusing and interesting story arc, Steven develops a girl band with virtually no talent in the hope that they can ride post-Spice Girls Girl Power to a multiplatinum hit. One fascinating section has Steven talking about the amount of cash it takes to maintain his lifestyle.

There was one overriding concern I had while reading this book - that the central protagonists' personality would end up overpowering the story itself. Magically it doesn't happen - and 'Kill Your Friends' ends up being one hugely entertaining read of lasting impact.

Also by Niven:
Music from Big Pink: A Novella (33 1/3)

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars after its point is made, this book gets boring May 21, 2009

By W R Visser

Format:Paperback

Right in its beginning "Kill your friends" explains the workings of the British popmusic-industry: a pretty random guessing which popact will be big in the near future. Allowing a wide margin for misjudgement, for the one single hit brings in enough money to compensate for all the failures.

In between popmusic-executives are abundantly wasting time and money in keeping up images & appearances. Also indulging themselves in Sex, Drugs and Booze.

As we have known this behavior from the early Rolling Stones on, I cannot see why author John Niven needs 324 pages to tell us this once again. Reading his book makes an increasingly repetitive and boring experience.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Sound of the Living Dead March 16, 2009

By baroquemaniac

Format:Paperback

When I read this book, I was at the same time busy exploring Rachmaninov's piano music and had just finished a run-through of most of Haydn's symphonies; so I probably would not count as prime target audience for a satire on bitching and scheming in the Britpop industry.

But though I would be absolutely clueless if asked if any of the bands or musicians mentioned in the book were taken from real life, and though I would probably not much care to listen to even a few bars of the music it deals with, I got easily sucked into this obscenely sprawling vanity fair and found the various freak shows on offer quite entertaining.

The thing ist, at times the roar not only of the music, but also of what the author wants to tell us gets quite deafining, so that you want to hold your ears and scream,'Yes, I got the bloody message', but there is a fair chance that you will nonetheless follow the over-sexed, drug-addled narrator's rantings to the last sentence, repetetive though they are.

However, I do have some old-fashioned moral reservations. It is not so much that we are treated to bucketfuls of sperm and vomit and that a limited number of four-letter words accounts for a high percentage of text; but there is murder, gory and given in graphic detail, and though (hopefully) the author wants us to perceive the murderer as perverted to the core, the fact that the book as a whole is so outrageously funny seems to me to make somewhat light of atrocities that would make us blanch in real life.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars not bad at all January 25, 2009

By Ryan Van Baalen

Format:Paperback

like woah! i have never read a book/listened to a record/or watched a movie with more profanity and completely obscene descriptions as this one. so you probably think this was the one time i'd be offended, right? nah. it was hilarious!

this dude who works for some UK music label is in charge of finding new talent, and he goes all over the place basically snorting coke and calling up hookers instead.

i love music, so it was kind of depressing to think that the cd's i buy could actually be influenced by a nut job like this one. of course, i also dont know how a nut job like this could last very long in the industry, either.

sure, sure, some of it was probably satire or something... but i'm not that smart, though, so who knows?...but i really had fun reading it even though the main character was a total...well, it's a word i can't post on amazon. but read it, you'll laugh.