Work! Consume! Die! by Frankie Boyle

Frankie Boyle’s new book is a curious mixture of the expected harsh humour with social commentary and fiction. The book is a series of chapters of Frankie’s views on various issues – the economy, war, celebrity, etc, intercut with chapters of a surreal novella in which Frankie Boyle tries to maintain a certain level of fame, as a serial rapist is targeting celebrities who fall out of fashion. Or that’s what it’s supposed to be about – it’s actually filled with Frankie imagining or dreaming something, which allows extended surrealist passages.

These aren’t without interest, but reading them is like reading someone’s dream diary – not as interesting to you as to the writer. This may be a little harsh though, because this book is funny. The topical sections are basically a series of jokes, and often one sentence gags. Many of them seem to have been taken directly from the author’s Sun column, but this problem is surpassed by his pulling no punches with jokes about the phone hacking scandal. Some would say this is hypocritical, but let’s call it a good example of an author biting the hand that feeds when it’s very, very appropriate to do so.