''My Idea of Fun'' is the second novel by

Will Self William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English author, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine collections of non-fiction writing. Sel ...

, and was published in 1993.

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 literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...

, in which the main character, Ian Wharton, learns the art of black magic from 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 called 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 Broadhurst begins to take over more and more aspects of his life. The novel may also be seen as an example of an

unreliable narrator An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unr ...

, as it is unclear whether the strange events in the novel are meant to be real or hallucinatory.

Reviews

Nicholas Lezard Nicholas Andrew Selwyn LezardThe Cambridge University List of Members up to 31 December 1991, Cambridge University Press, p. 814 is an English journalist, author and literary critic. Background and education The Lezard family went from London to ...

said of the book that "No one else I can think of writes about contemporary Britain with such elan, energy and witty intelligence. Rejoice."

References

External links

Official Will Self site
* 1993 British novels Novels by Will Self Fiction with unreliable narrators Novels set in Brighton Bloomsbury Publishing books {{1990s-novel-stub