- My Idea of Fun
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My Idea of Fun 
1st editionAuthor(s) Will Self Country United Kingdom Language English Genre(s) Novel Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Publication date 16 Sep 1993 Media type Print Paperback Pages 309 pp ISBN 0-7475-1591-3 OCLC Number 62891878 My Idea of Fun is a 1993 novel by Will Self.
Contents
Plot summary
A lonely boy grows up just outside Brighton in a caravan park with his over-sexual mother and the tenant Mr Broadhurst who takes the boy on a disturbing and often violent journey.
The novel works as a strange Bildungsroman, in which the main character - Ian Wharton learns the art of black magic from his benafactor Mr. Broadhurst who is also known as The Fat Controller. At The Fat Controller's behest Ian engages in a series of strange acts including time travel and trips to an alternate reality - the Land of Children's jokes: a grotesque alternate universe inhabited by the menacing and deformed characters from jokes. The protagonist's education culminates in bizarre rites of bestiality and necrophilia. However he finds that in exchange for knowledge of the black arts Mr. Broadhurst begins to take over more and more aspects of the protagonist's life.
The novel could also be seen as an example of an unreliable narrator as it is unclear whether the strange events in the novel are meant to be real or hallucinatory.
Reviews
"No one else I can think of writes about contemporary Britain with such elan, energy and witty intelligence. Rejoice."[1]
References
- ^ Lezard, Nicholas (1993-05-31). "Guardian Book Review". Guardian. http://will-self.com/category/books/my-idea-of-fun/. Retrieved 2009-03-10.
External links
Works of Will Self Fiction Cock and Bull (1992) • My Idea of Fun (1993) • Great Apes (1997) • How the Dead Live (2000) • Dorian, an Imitation (2002) • The Book of Dave (2006) • The Butt (2008) • Walking to Hollywood (2010)Short fiction The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1991) • Grey Area (1994) • License to Hug (1995) • The Sweet Smell of Psychosis (1996) • Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo (1998) • Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (1998) • Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe (2004) • Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes (2008) • The Undivided Self: Selected Stories (2009)Non-fiction Junk Mail (1996) • Perfidious Man (2000) v Sore Sites (2000) • Feeding Frenzy (2001) • Psychogeography (2007) • Psycho Too (2009)Categories:- 1993 novels
- British novels
- Novels by Will Self
- Fiction with unreliable narrators
- Novels set in Sussex
- 1990s novel stubs
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