Not a very interesting book I must say. The stories are sometimes dull, dry and lacking the 'gripping' factor. I spent quite a many lunch time breaks just to get to the last page and *phew finally I can move on to something new and hopefully more exciting.. ( )

This is Self's fourth and most recent collection of shorter fiction, actually a novella and five other tales.

Sadly, the law of diminishing returns seems to be kicking in. Many of Self's familiar obsessions appear. The titular novella sees the return of Dr. Zach Busner, the smug psychiatrist of the earlier "The Quantity Theory of Insanity", in a fitfully amusing tale of duelling head shrinkers who send each other increasingly bizarre patients. Chimps, the stars of his novel "Great Apes", also make a comeback in "Return to the Planet of the Humans".

In fact, these two stories illustrate what's wrong with this collection. It feels like a facsimile of his earlier work, there's precious little that's new here. "161" might have a teenage thug hiding out in a pensioner's flat in a high rise council estate on Merseyside rather than be set in Self's usual surreal and grotesque London, but it could just as easily be in the capital.

There is one exception. Self's public persona means it's often easy to forget that he's a family man, and "The Five Swing Walk" a tale of a divorced father's day with his children, is an oddly touching lament about the breakdown of family life even if, inevitably, the playgrounds of west London are strewn with dog turds and worse menaces.

As well as this story, the author's ability to paint satirical and absurd portraits of the Big Smoke and its denizens remains undimmed and is what saves the collection along with the splendidly OTT language that tumbles onto the page. He's still the closest thing we have to Jonathan Swift working today and hopefully this is just an aberration by a man who's generally a master of the shorter form. ( )

http://nomiddlename.blogspot.com/2007... ( )