69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (Paperback)

by Stewart Home (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
British experimental novelist and cultural critic Home (Cunt) makes his American debut with his trademark fusion of highbrow theory and pulp pornography. Narrator Anna Noon is a randy 20-year-old living in Aberdeen, Scotland, having an affair with a mysterious older man named Alan, as well as the occasional threesome and foursome. Alan is obsessed with a cult book called 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess, whose author claims that he was hired to secretly dispose of Princess Di's body by dragging it around Aberdeen's ancient stone circles until it decomposed. Alan tries to test the author's story by dragging a carefully weighted ventriloquist's dummy around the stone circles. In between these experiments and orgies, Alan and Anna discuss postmodern literature. Alan offers a running commentary on novelists and theorists like Kathy Acker, Francis Fukuyama and Donna Haraway, tracing the evolution of experimental writing in the postwar era and weighing in with his own critiques ("Alan didn't like [Paul] Johnson's Intellectuals.... Rather than developing an argument, Johnson simply reiterated his irrational prejudice against critical thinking in a series of poorly schematised chapters"). The contrast between these erudite lectures and the sex scenes, which Home writes in the coarse argot of porn novels-complete with dozens of colorful synonyms for the relevant anatomy-is amusing, though the joke wears thin after a while. There are bursts of vivid descriptive prose, as well as moments of demented humor (including the ventriloquist dummy's hilarious turn as narrator). Both the sex scenes and the arch commentary are occasionally tedious, but fans of Acker or Robert Coover may enjoy the metafictional conceit.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
'Read the book as high brow Jackie Collins and the joke's on you for not appreciating Home's piquant, plain-spoken scholarship.' -- Metro Times, 1 March, 2003

'Stewart Home is one of our most important and interesting novelists.' -- New Statesman, April 1, 2003

'The British writer Stewart Home, champion of 'proletarian' postmodernism, is a surprisingly easy read.' -- New York Times, 12 January, 2003

'This is an author with ... an envious skill for describing harsh landscape sparingly and beautifully. Keep it unreal Mr Home.' -- The Guardian, January 25, 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S. (December 20, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841953814
• ISBN-13: 978-1841953816
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #974,146 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ehhh.., December 9, 2003

By	"jupiter0131" (Crappsville, missouri) - See all my reviews

i wasnt that impressed---i admit, although the sex scenes are pretty explicit, the rest of the book went on forever- i agree with the first guy: home sounds like he wants to be a critic, because the humor of Alan's character got old really quick. home is over-indulgant and doesnt know how to keep things moderate (over does the sex, over does the book criticism, over does a lot of things); i think he tries too hard to make Anna apathetic and modern.

however, if you take a million steps back and look at the story itself, its interesting--i just think home could have gone a better route of writing it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious literary reviews disguised as porn, May 22, 2006

By	A. Knowlton (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If it hadn't been a book for my English class, I never would have touched it. The very cover is repulsive, the sex scenes are grotesque, mechanical, explicit, and detached, and anything that isn't a sex scene (which is about 98% of the book) is high-brow literary criticism of books no one really cares about. The characters, even the female protagonist, lack depth and even Alan seems like an author-insert. This kind of trash belongs on a website with "pretentiousXXX" in the URL, not in bookstores.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Blah, June 6, 2005

By	Tiina (Joensuu, Finland) - See all my reviews

This book could have been a lot more interesting. For instance, if you read through the Editorial Review on this page, you can see there's potential in the story, but reading the actual book is just a waste of time. As Home himself puts it in this novel: Bad literature is bad literature is bad literature.

Also, I'm a Finn and read the book in Finnish. I can't help but wonder why this book was translated to my language in the first place. It's not Home's best and the neverending gibberish about Scotland's stone circles and obscure forgotten writers has nothing to give to us.