Customer Reviews

Stark

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ben Elton is probably England's most talented comedian. Not only does he do stand up comedy he has written scripts for Black Adder and the Young ones. This was his first novel.

The finding out the plot is part of the enjoyment and point of the novel so that it would be unfair to reveal it. However there are two tiers of characters. At one end is a financially succussesful businessman who seems to be slightly based on Rupert Murdock. He is gradually drawn into a conspiracy which is the basis of the book. At the other end are a number of classic comedy figures who discover the conspiracy and try to prevent it.

The book is a passionate defence of the enviroment movement and raises a number of issues which have since been more widely accepted. However it is more than a political tract. It is simply laugh out loud funny. Elton writes the book as a series of gags which are totally effective. It was a comedy classic in its time.

I love the way Ben Elton uses characters so real you believe you know them. Then he dumps them in the middle of the type of serious drama where you would expect only hollywood superheros would have a chance. But then things just dont happen quite like they do in the movies in reality or in this story. 90% of the book is hilarious but due to the realism he presents the 10% that is frightning is pretty scary.

Dave Reid

Ben Elton is truly into morality plays. Each of his books has a lesson to teach the world about the way humanity is truly screwing things up. "Stark" is no exception.

In "Stark", the richest of the rich have come up with a hideous plan to survive the end of the world which they expect to occur in, oh say, about eight days. Now it's up to a rag tag team of not-quite-together "greenies" (and a pair of Aboriginals) to save the planet. Can they do it? And if they do, is that such a great thing?

Ben Elton has a wonderful knack for taking society's faults and playing them out to the nth degree. After reading "Stark", you'll never take the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect lightly again

It is apparent from Elton's first novel, Stark, that he has tremendous ability as a word crafter and imagineer (I made that word up - it means "one who can conjure an interesting story.") Unfortunately, as his first novel was released, he had not firmly established his skills as a novelist.

The plot -
An eclectic group of environmentalist is looking into just exactly what the Stark Consortium, a collection of the richest and most powerful men in the world, is up to. What the consortium is up to is the most devastating conspiracy in all of human history. Since the entire novel rests on the slow revelation of that conspiracy, any further plot discussion would be a spoil, so that's that.

The characters -
I love Elton's characters in this book. They are not particularly "full of life" as I usually prefer. Instead they are caricatures, and in this zany story it really works. Every one of them has unique viewpoints, personality quirks (to put it mildly) and speech patterns. Zimmerman, the bollockless Aussie Vietnam vet, is a scream.

The problems -
In the first half of the book, Elton has real problems establishing the point of view (POV) for the reader. An example of a POV problem would be characters A and B walking through a garden, while the author tells us about a conversation between characters C and D. If not handled properly, this can lead the poor reader into thinking C and D are in the garden, and generally just confuse the heck out of him or her. This is a very common mistake for new novelist, and something that a good editor will point out and get fixed.

The other problem is purely subjective and not likely to bother many other folks. It's just too preachy. Throughout the book the reader is assaulted with tales of gloom and doom from the extreme camp of the environmentalist collective. Obviously for storyline development a good deal of this was necessary, but there are times when instead of visualizing the characters or the scene you just see Elton standing there wagging his finger at you. Not pleasant in those parts. Yes, there are things being done to the environment that need to be changed. No, the world is not about to end. 'nuff said.

The good stuff -
As stated before, Elton is a master word crafter. He does an outstanding job of bouncing the story between two or three settings, and brings all his plot elements together before the end. There are two or three paragraphs near the end describing the emotion of jealously that are absolutely amazing.

The rating -
Three stars. It was almost a really good read, but the technical flaws and the preachiness forced it down to "better than a poke in the eye with a stick." Anyone who is a member of Greenpeace would probably give it a four.

I had a little bit of difficulty getting into this novel, despite the story being about environmental issues- and despite most of the main characters being Australian. In one way that was the problem, they were Australian and they were stereotypical pie chowing Australians, except the hippies of course, who fell into their own clichés. I think the clincher came when he used the term 'saussies' as slang for sausages. Given, I was only an itty-bitty nine-year-old when this book was published, but I have never heard anyone use this colloquialism. The collectively agreed upon slang for sausage is 'snag' and even then any user would elicit an inordinate amount of inward groans. Unfortunately the entire book is riddled with this sort of banter, though on several occasions he does ridicule it himself. And this is his first novel after all, and for a first novel you have to give him props.

Like every other Ben Elton novel that I own you can see a dozen or so cat's ears defiling the pages because he has said something so poignant or witty or that I completely agree with that I don't want to forget where it is- so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I loved The Young Ones (but never watched Black Adder). This story begins in with two complete opposites in Western Australia- CD the poor, self centred wanker who thinks he is the greatest, and Sly, self made billionaire who doesn't even know where half his money is. Neither of them is likeable. None of them are except the psychotic war vet who rants and raves when looking at cherry tomatoes.

Sly is part of the Stark consortium, a group of mega-rich nut jobs who know the world is coming to an end and they have a nasty plan. CD, the girl that he is trying to seduce, a journalist, Aboriginals who lost their homes and a few crazy hippies are suspicious- what are they to do?

This is basically a precursor to This Other Eden, following the same topics and in a manner the same conclusions, but earlier and with different people- this is supposed to be the present after all and This Other Eden is some time in the future.

It's still worth reading, even if only for the times that you burst out laughing in public.

Ben Elton is probably best known as scriptwriter for the Blackadder series, and that will give you a fair idea of both his talent and his way of thinking. To get the most out of Stark it probably helps to have followed the stand-up comic series he used to do on the BBC. That was brilliant and no two ways about it, provided you didn't find some of the topics embarrassing, which, in the absence of any maiden aunts, I didn't. No topic was off-limits. There was a great deal about certain parts of the body, but we were long used to that from Billy Connolly. Where Ben Elton went further was in dealing with political and racial, and particularly with environmental, issues. He used to deliver his monologues at machine-gun speed, and I was impressed not only by the sheer physical stamina he must have needed but also by what was either a phenomenal memory or a genius for on-the-spot improvisation, or maybe both. He went in for gag-lines in a way Billy Connolly doesn't, but one talent they have in common is for seeing the ridiculous side of quite ordinary things. There was always a general theme each time, environmental as often as not, but a few dozen incidental targets also used to get shot at along the way.

Read Stark with that in mind. I like the potshot he takes at champagne - the name trademarked so as to keep the price artificially high. However I remembered with pleasure the way we the public called the champagne producers' bluff at the millennium by boycotting the stuff so that we could find some high-quality surplus being sold off at bargain prices quite some time later. This thought brought me some comfort in reading Stark - perhaps we are not totally in the hands of the tycoons. Other details were entirely incidental and unrelated to the general message of the book, but he is the first person I have ever known to call attention to a strange deaths-head kind of face that has long repelled me in some famous American women anxious to preserve their looks beyond a certain age.

The thread of the book is serious in more senses than one. It is about the threat to the environment, and just exactly how bad that is I don't think anyone is quite sure. Ben Elton goes completely over the top, and that was smart. I don't suppose that even he takes at face value his scenario of the asset-stripper co-opted into the exclusive club of monstrous tycoons - a tobacco-baron, an arms exporter, a fast-food king foisting his stringburgers and gristlefurters on a complaisant public and other usual suspects - whose purpose is literally to bring about environmental disaster in the full knowledge of what they are doing. By caricaturing the suspects in this way he avoids being overtly political, and by going to extremes in his disaster-scenario he keeps the story vivid and involving, but just a story (I hope) all the same. For good measure he throws in a couple of unrelated nuclear catastrophes and the wreck of a maritime cargo of toxic waste. Such is the power of the money involved that people manage to stay unaware of what is going on (governments hardly get a mention), and the only resistance comes from a picaresque assortment of well-meaning liberals, hippies, dropouts and aborigines. One of these is a devotee of Judge Dread comics, and I wonder whether Ben got some of his ideas from such sources himself.

The story moves fast and the characters are interesting, although the book would hardly challenge Evelyn Waugh or Julian Barnes for Fine Writing. I found it helped to keep in mind my image of Ben Elton on stage, and I could hear his voice quite clearly - he writes much of it the way he talks. I find it hard to blame the politicians or even the tycoons in real life beyond a certain extent. If we are being suckered that is mainly our own fault, it seems to me, and we are, it seems to me, and it is, it seems to me. The planet's resources are not a bottomless pit, it will not take more than a certain amount of abuse just as our own bodies will not, we have not yet seen certain disasters as they could be (e.g. a nuclear meltdown, of which Chernobyl was a mere mooncast shadow), and of course mother nature herself could take a hand with, say, meteor-strikes, earthquakes, super-volcanoes etc. Probably nobody quite knows the extent of the chances we're taking, but it seems to me that we need to wake up and to grow up in the way we're behaving. We were given our brains to use, and we should remember the parable of the talents.

the book Stark is a great book and one of my Ben Elton faviortes it has all the elements of a great script and it focases on a certain element it has two charctors who couldn't be more a like and two nutters who make it a almost impossible to put the book down however it takles an imporant aspet and the guiltless people who take advanted ofg are need for cosmic goods it is a great book and it should be a film my favorote charctor in the movie is CD who has no desire about what happens expect to get in with Rachel and maybe not get blown to pieces by a rocket on the way.

Unlike the previous review, I think this book is an extremely funny story (very humorous and outstanding characters), promoting a very important cause (the book is pro-Eco). The world's biggest corporate tycoons are planning to leave our planet as the Earth is turning un-inhabitable due the over consumption of its resources. A weird group of greens try to stop them. After reading this book I just had to read Elton's other book "This Other Eden" that evolves around the same Eco theme.

I am sure Ben Elton is a funny guy. But Stark is simply too long, too poorly written, and too poorly edited to really have the impact; at over 450 pages it takes forever to get going, and when it finally does get going, the storyline has been so jumbled as to remove any "voice" Mr Elton may have in his later works. Like I said, I am sure he's a funny guy -- Blackadder as a good example. But this is a great example of why first novels are so tough to write -- it's obvious that Mr Elton has 1000 ideas for funny lines; it's just that not all of them should be in this book.

Also, the character development is pretty flat -- only a few of them show any growth throughout the book. Ben would have done much better to reduce the number of characters and show them going through some real growth as opposed to remaining cartoonish. What, for example, does CD learn throughout those 450+ pages? Nothing. If he does, Mr Elton's not telling.

Whoever edited this book should also take a look at basic principles of being an Editor prior to publishing such a long-winded novel. It also appears that punctuation has taken a holiday at the publisher's editing desk, and it's inexcusable for errors such as using "abstracted" when "distracted" is really meant.

There are, of course, some truly funny passages in the book but unfortunately they are far and few between. At 200-250 well-edited pages, it could have been a real scream of a book. At 450 pages, too many characters, and a plot line that looks like 3x5 cards thrown on the ground make for a tough read.

Let's hope his later books have better editors on staff to help Mr Elton along. He's got some talent, but it doesn't show here.

'Stark' is one of Ben Elton's earlier, and weaker, literary efforts. While his staunch pro-environmental/anti-establishment beliefs are commendable, he seems to force feed these ideals into a slapstick novel that manages only to be mildly humorous and ultimately rather ordinary. In 'Stark' planet Earth is a mess, on the verge of total ecological meltdown due to human mismanagement. Mankind's mega-rich elite have realized this for some time and have decided to build rockets to the moon to start human civilization all over again. Yet there is an improbable bunch of characters out to divulge and halt this plot. Silly? Yes. But slivers of dialogue are quite funny, and the wacky Australian characters are certainly memorable (..the rocket launch site is in the Western Australian boonies).

Bottom line: a so-so early effort by Elton. I suggest reading his later works, starting with 'Popcorn'.