It’s a highly satirical novel about a disgruntled cab driver called Dave who, annoyed with his life and everyone and everything in it, writes a book containing his thoughts on how life should be. This book gets buried in the ground, and then hundreds of years later is dug up and treated like a bible.

Structure

The Book of Dave has an unusual structure in that it alternates between different time periods. Half of the chapters feature Dave driving his cab round London, showing everything that happens from his point of view. The other half of the chapters are set 500 years in the future, when England is a collection of islands and a strange pig-human hybrid animal has evolved.

Language

Will Self is well known for his use of complicated language, and the Book of Dave is certainly no exception. The chapters which are set 500 years in the future use a kind of evolved cockney language which is written phonetically. While this may be a clever idea, at first I found it extremely difficult to read, slowing down my reading speed considerably and actually causing me to abandon the book after the first few chapters.

I did however decide to continue reading the book a few weeks later, and after reading a few more chapters I was starting to get more used to the phonetically-written future dialect. It still slowed me down a bit, but as the book progressed I began to appreciate its value within the story more.

Plot

The basic idea behind the plot is a very interesting one, particularly to someone like me who hates religion. This story makes the point that anyone could write a book full of ideas on how to lead your life, no matter how ridiculous, and many years’ later people might actually take it as the ultimate truth.

It’s fascinating to witness how the events in Dave’s life progress leading up to him writing the book, interspersed with the future events which were caused by what he wrote. In that sense, this novel really comes together as you progress through it and see the two sides of the story converging.

Conclusion

This is a difficult book to read at first, but definitely worth sticking with due to the unique writing style, interesting plot developments, fantastic characterisation, and thought-provoking concepts about life.