Date posted: March 3, 2008

Will Self: The Book of Dave

The first few days after I had finished reading Will Self’s The Book of Dave, I occasionally found myself mixing Mokni and Arpee, describing things as toyist when I meant fake and expecting people to understand when I asked them to meet me in a few units. But I’m slowly recovering. A bit of moto oil does miracles.

In alternating chapters The Book of Dave tells two stories. The first is set in present day London, the second in the distant future, at a time when rising sea levels have turned the area around London into an archipelago.

Dave is Dave Rudman, an aging cab driver, who loses it after his wife Michelle divorces him and at some point no longer allows him to see his son. All he has left is his cab and his Knowledge, the map of London every cabbie must learn by heart, to obtain his licence. The Book of Dave is, well, the book Dave writes in the midst of his depression in which he lays down his rants about marriage, divorce, visitation rights and the world at large. He has the manuscript engraved on metal plates and buries them in the garden of his ex-wife’s posh new house in Hampstead, in the hope that one day his son will unearth the book and learn about the Truth.

Fastforward to 523 AD, some 500 years after the discovery of the Book of Dave. Dave Rudman’s rants have become law, his book the foundation of a new religion. Fathers and mothers live separated and children spent half the week with either parent. A few days after they’re born, babies are covered in oil. If they survive the next two weeks they get a name. 80 percent of all newborns die, but no one questions the custom, because this is what Dave has prescribed. Unbelievers are brought in front of the inquisition, where their Knowledge is questioned. “The Examiner repeated his request: ‘List eighteen, run eleven.’ Symun took a deep breath and began: ‘4wud Kenzingtun Mal, ri Kenzingtun Chirch Stree, leff No-ing-ill, ri Pemrij Röd, fawud Pemrij viwwers.’”

Much of the second storyline takes place on the island of Ham, where the people speak Mokni, an Inglish dialect, derived from Dave Rudman’s cabbie slang, and Arpee its more sophisticated sibling. It takes some time to get used to the Mokni. Once I got to the point where I automatically read every sentence phonetically, it seemed to flow quite easily though. It sort of resembles the nadsat in A Clockwork Orange. Since I’m not a native speaker of the English language I’m afraid I have missed some of the more subtle linguistic wizardry. Here’s a bit of Mokni for you:

“Wot cood B wurs van diggin in ve zön, eh? Eye no wot sumuv U ló bleev in yer arts. Eye no U stil fink vat ve Búk woz fown ere on Am. U granddads iz öl enuff 2 remembah ve Geezer? There was a low murmur of assent. B4 king Dave vair woz enni numbah uv pissi lyttual playsez wot ad a clame 2 B ve craydul uv ar faif, innit? Another murmur. But ve kings granddad, ee chaynjd all vat. Ee ad a revelashun vat ve Búk woz fahnd in Lundun, aint vat ve troof?”

Part of the joy of reading The Book of Dave lies in the cross-references between the alternating chapters and in discovering how events in one storyline are mirrored in the other, as in the book’s subtitle: "A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future". It took me a while to realize that the wheel, on which criminals and sinners are executed, instead of being crucified on a cross, is in fact the London Eye.

Obviously The Book of Dave is a religious satire. It is also a grim and at times hilarious depiction of present day London. It reminded me of Naked by Mike Leigh in its bleakness. Throughout their married life Dave and Michelle are united in their mutual misery, but as it says somewhere, "Yet even unhappiness can be a kind of intimacy."

Will Self reads from The Book of Dave from the back of a cab.