Identity Crisis

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He becomes the face of a movement to criminalise and prosecute the long-dead offenders of history, and in pushing himself into the spotlight he opens himself up to allegations of misconduct of his own. Even by his own standards, ‘Identity Crisis’ is a heavy hitter, with a random set of murders being its central theme. The Dinner Guest more or less achieved this: I had figured out whodunnit pretty early on but not the motive. I suppose this isn't surprising given his history of stand-up - he sees the comedy in political life and mercilessly skewers it in this book, treading a fine line between respecting and laughing at political correctness.

Without wishing to offend anybody, I found the ‘trying to please all the people all the time’ and social tip toeing around free speech and even free thought a real concern and even a real future possibility. I picked this up because Audible pushed it as a recommendation and because I fancied a break from fantasy. Elton has his finger firmly on the zeitgeist of the times as he has his dig at Harvey Weinstein, interfering in political elections from foreign powers, political correctness, ultra-feminism, social media, immigration, fake news, Brexit. Both campaigns eagerly fall on every social media trend and news item, spinning it to their cause, to outrageous effect. Whether his subject matter is IVF (Inconceivable), time travel (Time and Time Again) or climate catastrophe (Stark), he has a unique way of approaching his subject matter.Reading this book feels like drinking six of those double shot soy milk lattes that the millennials and the transgenders like, then getting transformed into a pinball and bounced around a pinball machine. 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 . Despite there being a lot of hullaballoo in the text about all these people being killed by the same assassin (a guy in a Spurs shirt - apparently Russian budgets have been cut and their assassins can only afford one shirt), we never actually see the assassins. Few authors do satire as well as Ben Elton and this seems to be his vent on everything that is absurd and simply wrong in our modern social media, PC correct world. There are people who want to get offended about everything and anything, people who leave no room for honest mistakes or who see evil in everyone - spaces where simply existing as a cis, straight white person is enough to have you villified even if you try your hardest to be respectful.

The book's less terrible than it would be if Elton was a full-on reactionary, but it's probably more boring. This gives him a remarkable amount of wriggle room to explore topics, by weaving in and out of the facts like dodgems. Instead it comes off less satirical and more simply reflective of everyday life (which I suppose is a commentary in itself of just how absurd things have gotten at this point! The book contains a series of seemingly unrelated plot lines which all come together beautifully at the end of the narrative/narratives. Whilst we all know, and are relatively inured to, the national media having their own political axe to grind we are less aware of the political leanings of Social Media or even who is responsible for those provocative hashtags.These sort of identity wars, the language policing, the no shades of grey type attitude already exists, on Tumblr, on Twitter, in a multitude of online spaces. I have also been subjected to the character of Narsti Rimes, a 20-year-old grime artist whose dialect is, uh.

However, it is definitely controversial and no doubt would be offensive to some readers in relation to both its themes (identity, pronouns and online rage) as well as profanity (the 'c word' is used a few times, consider yourself warned).

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I recognize that reality TV shows are now here to stay and most of them frustrate me: but, perhaps I am tired of reading about the tricks and deceit behind the ‘reality’. The endless conversations on political correctness (in particular pronouns) become repetitive and tedious fast and it reads exactly like how it is: a 60 year old writing for other 60 year olds about da yoof of today.