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Title: Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe ISBN: 0-87113-143-9 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: April, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great perverse fun
Comment: This is the first of Tom Sharpe's two novels set in South Africa. This is a very funny book. It is very perverse and zany fun.
The book begins with the murder of a black house wroker by a member of a prominent English family in the city of Piemburg. Enter the police. There is Kommandant van Heerden, who wants nothing more than to be English, Konstabel Els, who is renowned as a killer of blacks, and Luitenant Veerkramp, who is one of the slimiest and wiliest characters in the Piemburg police force. A routine police investigation turns into an armed confrontation between the unwitting members of the Piemburg police force, while van Heerden is unwillingly seduced by the murderer he is investigating. These are just a few of the hijinks that ensue as the police's irrational actions keep making the situation worse.
This book is excellent because Sharpe is able to expose the irrationality of apartheid and the actions of the authorities to keep this practice going. After reading this book, there is little wonder in my mind why Sharpe was expelled from South Africa in the '70s.
Rating: 2
Summary: Funny but unexceptional
Comment: In many respects, apartheid South Africa provides a great setting for farces and satirical novels. Tom Sharpe ably exploits the possibilities in this tale involving an interracial affair, a bishop who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a murder investigation by irredeemably dumb and racist Afrikaner policemen.
Parts of Riotous assembly are very funny and Sharpe maintains the hectic pace of the narrative throughout. But in the end, I was disappointed with this book. My dissatisfaction had nothing to do with being an Afrikaner or with an aversion to dark humour. Carl Hiaasen is one of my favourite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie version of Sharpe's Wilt. My problem was with the characters, who seemed to have no personalities whatsoever beyond the stereotypes they represent. To truly enjoy a book (even a farce), I have to develop an interest in or establish some kind of rapport with the characters, and in the case of Riotous assembly this never happened.
Rating: 4
Summary: a laugh riot
Comment: A friend in Britain and I sent each other some favorite books. Since David hadn't read much SF/F, I sent him Jonathan Carroll's Bones of the Moon and James P. Blaylock's The Last Coin. In turn, he sent me some British humor: Tom Sharpe and Clive James. James' books were quite interesting--a well-written autobiography with some sly touches that never quite had me belly-laughing, but kept me reading. Sharpe, on the other hand, I fell into with a gusto. From page one of Riotous Assembly, my hands were doing double-duty turning pages and trying to keep my sides from splitting.
Imagine the writer you would get if you mixed P.G. Wodehouse and Hunter Thompson, and then placed them in South Africa; that's Tom Sharpe. He indeed manages to combine the wit and language skills, as well as the awkward situations of Wodehouse with the sharpened pen of satire and low opinion of humans from Thompson, and his target is South Africa and the police forces there (I believe that he was jailed there for awhile, and ultimately deported).
Upon finishing Riotous Assembly, I rushed to see if I could find any more by this Sharpe fellow. Luckily, Vintage has brought him across the sea for our enjoyment. Indecent Exposure is the sequel to Riotous Assembly and just as funny; perhaps even funnier, given the satire of the Dornford Yates club (a group of Englishmen who adore the veddy British writer Dornford Yates who is clearly an analog for Wodehouse) within the larger South African satire. I also read Wilt, in which he drops some of the satirical and plays the perverted Wodehouse more. Wilt is okay, but I would suggest you try the South African novels first. If you're like me, you'll have to read Wilt or any of his other novels then--just because you can't get enough of this amazing fellow.
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Title: Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe ISBN: 0871132796 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: April, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Blott on the Landscape by Tom Sharpe ISBN: 0879519274 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Midden by Tom Sharpe ISBN: 0879518014 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: November, 1997 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Vintage Stuff by Tom Sharpe ISBN: 0330269828 Publisher: MacMillan Pub Ltd Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Wilt: Tom Sharpe by Tom Sharpe ISBN: 0879517344 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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