LATEST SALES & OFFERS: PROMOTIONS
Ben Elton's multi-award winning career as both performer and writer encompasses some of the most memorable and incisive comedy of the past thirty-five years. In addition to his hugely influential work as a stand-up comic, he was co-writer of TV hits The Young Ones and Blackadder and sole creator of The Thin Blue Line and Upstart Crow. He has written fifteen major bestsellers, including Stark, Popcorn, Inconceivable, Dead Famous, High Society, Two Brothers and Time and Time Again, three West End plays and three musicals, including global phenomenon We Will Rock You. He has written and directed two feature films, Maybe Baby and Three Summers. He is married and has three children.
Standup comic, playwright, and novelist Elton (Popcorn, 1997) comes up with too little that's new to avoid the soporific in this account of lost love rekindled - to no good - among the back alleys of modern London. Polly Slade is one of those left-wing busybodies who can never be persuaded to leave bad enough alone. A social worker at the Office of Equal Opportunity, she evaluates discrimination cases all day long and presses the suits of those who've been unfairly passed over for housing or promotion. And what thanks does she get for her trouble? Precious little, unless you count the deranged stalker who fell in love with her and now leaves obscene messages in her voice-mail every night. It's understandable, then, that Polly is less than thrilled to hear her phone ring one evening near midnight, though it turns out - for once - that her fears were mislaid: The caller isn't Peter (her stalker) but Jack Kent, an old flame from the early 1980s. Jack was a US Army captain, then based at Greenham Common, and Polly was living in the lesbian commune formed nearby to protest NATO's nuclear arsenal. They made an odd pair in those days, but managed to fall in love despite it. Eventually, however, Jack abruptly broke things off, fearful that an association with a declared leftist would blight his career. Now, he's risen to the very top and, as a general, needn't worry about a thing. So he calls Polly to rekindle the flame. Can he? Before that question can be answered, he finds himself enmeshed in a weird threesome with Polly and Peter (who by now is even more demented and violent). Maybe Jack can save Polly from more than loneliness. Or maybe he can make a bad situation even worse. An anti-fairy tale sadly lacking the wit or originality to lift it past the middle grade. (Kirkus Reviews)
