Kill Your Friends

A first-person novel about a rabid egotist/narcissist in the music industry of the 1990s. It may portray that world accurately, but I didn't find inhabiting this character's brain insightful, humorous or enjoyable to read. Reading it was rather like having to live in today's USA with the overbearing impact of Donald Trump.

I got up early one Saturday and started reading this book on the recommendation of a friend. By 8pm I had finished it. I cannot remember when I last read a book in a day without eating - ok I'm exaggerating for effect. This is a wonderfully dark nasty engrossing book. I know you are supposed to hate the main character - Steven Stelfox, but it felt like a perverse privilege to be in his head. I probably need help for thinking that. I almost contemplated re-reading straight away. Need I say more. The day before I finished Madame Bovary - my head is a mess, but I feel I have grown in a contorted mutated way!

I have a particular penchant for angry, misanthropic, sharp-tongued anti-heroes. Gregory House, Andy Sipowicz, Al Swearengen. There's something wonderfully cathartic about these characters, and Malcolm Tucker screaming "if I could, I'd punch you into paralysis!" barges his way onto that list with pizazz.

Steven Stelfox, the protagonist (because in no way could he ever be described a hero) of John Niven's Kill Your Friends takes angry misanthropy to the extreme. Set in the music industry at the arse end of Britpop, it features the most bigoted, hateful, obscene and depraved first person narrator since American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. Yet to call Stelfox a sexist or racist or any other kind of -ist misses the point. He doesn't show more discriminate - he hates everyone equally. His friends, his colleagues, his bosses, his lackeys. The artists he represents and those he only wishes he represented. Man or woman, black or white, talent or tosser - he doesn't have a kind word for anyone. He does have a foul and derogatory mouthful for everyone.

Read the full review at my blog. show less

Evil and hilarious, "Kill your friends", charts a year in the life of Steven Stelfox, a A&R guy. In case you were wondering what A&R execs did in the years of Britpop; they go on benders at record industry meetings, snuffle sacks of chang and give it to boilers up the gary. If you like to read books where you want to identify with the characters and learn something - don't bother with this. Recommended as a good, quick holiday read.

Fuck me what a mean book. The meanest bloody fucking book in the fucking world. Not much of a fucking character, the protagonist, and the plot just a long fucking trip in and out of abuse, but isn't that just the motherfucking thing about it.
Guess what the most frequent word in the book is : )

The sheer evilness of the lead character is pretty exhausting but some good moments of very black humor.

Amazing novel about an A&R at a hypothetical major label in the UK in the 90s.

Mentions Ferdy Unger-Hamilton who now heads Columbia UK.

Educational take-away would be the non-predictability of hits and how those drive the market. A&R is a fundamentally opportunistic endeavour and the best A&Rs are good at trend-watching and convincing promising artists to sign.