Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the Book | Readalikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Will Self
Dave Rudman hardly ever used to go into the dozen or so
cabbies shelters that were still scattered about Central London.
However, nowadays he was so skint he needed the cheap and
greasy fuel the old biddies who ran them pumped out. They
were weird little structures, the shelters, like antediluvian cricket
pavilions of green wood, which the city had grown up around.
Inside, the cabbies sat jawing and noshing at a table covered with
a plastic cloth. So many cabbies, their faces dissipated by the life
like those of prematurely aged peasants, worn out by their bigoted
credo. Dave didnt want to talk about the lost boy, but last week,
in the shelter in Grosvenor Gardens, when some pillock of a cabbie,
seeing Daves face, horsey with depression, stupidly asked what
was eating him, Dave spilled. Then the other cabbie quipped: A
woman is like a hurricane: when they pitch up theyre wet and
wild, and when they bugger off they take your house and your car.
Michelle hadnt only taken Daves house; shed got a bigger,
flasher one. Shed even got a new daddy for Daves boy and how
fucking sick is that? As for this Cohen cow who was milking Dave,
she must ave a fucking meter in her desk drawer and every time I bell her
she pops it on and it goes up and up, fifty quid at a time, a wunner for a
letter. Then theres the brief she gets to stand up on his hind legs in the
judges chambers for a grand a pop but I bet she gets a kick-back, though.
Cow. Lawyers theyre all scum.
As the cab crawled up the Edgware Road, the fare looked
bemused by the shiny pavements thronged by Arabs. Arabs sitting
behind the plate-glass windows of Maroush supping fruit juices and
smoking shishas, Arabs stopping at kiosks to buy their newspapers
full of squashed-fly print. Their women flapped along behind them,
tagged and bagged, but under their chadors theyre tricked out like fucking
tarts in silk undies, they are. It gives em a big turn-on . . . And my ex,
with her little job up in Hampstead, wrapping up thongs in fucking tissue
paper . . . Shes just the same . . . Theyre all the same . . . Where to in
Mill Hill exactly, guv?
Oh . . . sure . . . OK . . . The fare did some uncrumpling. Its
right next to somewhere called Wills Grove, but it doesnt have a
name of its own, its like a lane.
I know it.
You know it?
I know it its by the school.
Thats right. Im going to see a man who works at the National
Research Institute its business thats why Im here. I work
for CalBioTech you may have heard of us. Were one of the
organizations developing human genome patents . . . When Dave
didnt respond, the fare continued on another tack: I must say, Im
very impressed by how well you know London. Very impressed. In
Denver, where I live, you cant get a driver who knows downtown
let alone the burbs.
Dave Rudman had been to New York once, dragged there
resisting by his ex-wife, a drogue behind her jet. The human ant
heap was bad enough but worse was the disorientation. Even
with the grid system, I didnt know the runs, I didnt know the points
. . . I was fucking ignorant . . . Ill happily let America alone, mate, coz
my Knowledge is all here. There are plenty of fucking thickos right here
I dont need to go across the pond and learn your lot. Not that Im even
bothering with these ones, Ive done it now, Ive said my piece, an Ill tell
you what the real knowledge is fer nuffing! Women and their fucking
wiles, kids and how the loss of them can drive a man fucking mad, money
and how the getting of it breaks your bloody back! The obsolete Apricot
computer sat in the garage of his parents house on Heath View. It
squatted there on an old steamer trunk, beside two of his fathers
defunct one-armed bandits, their innards exposed, once glossy
oranges and lemons waxed by the twilight. In a rare moment of
clarity an oblique glance through the quarterlight of his mind
Dave Rudman remembered the long shifts in his Gospel Oak flat.
The tapping and the transcribing, the laying down of His Law.
Then his eyes tracked back to the misty windscreen, and the figure
hunched over the keyboard hadnt been him at all only some
other monk or monkey.
Excerpted from The Book of Dave by Will Self Copyright © 2006 by Will Self. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Press (USA). All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.