High Society - Ben Elton

drewboy 28.09.2004 (28.09.2004)
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Review of High Society - Ben Elton

Shock horror He did it again! This is my favourite Ben Elton Book (and I've read a few). I just love his bare faced honesty. He doesn't seem to care at all about controversy and if people may be offended by what he writes. He thinks these things so he writes these things and I wish other authors could grow a spine and do the same. This is the first one of his books I read and I have been hooked ever since. Anyway onto the book itself. The story ...
...its stupidity and the law. The main subject is drugs but Elton has incorporated these other issues to get the reader thinking around the subject. Each issue is a separate story line. This may sound confusing but it really isn't at all. Each story is easily followed and each character and stage of events is memorable enough to make the book pretty easy to read. It's not one of those books that you need a dictionary to understand. It was written to ...

nereesa85 24.01.2007 · Read full review
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Review of High Society - Ben Elton

...I plucked his latest novel, High Society, from the supermarket shelves I approached it with an open mind and looked forward to a rollocking good read with a bit of food-for-thought thrown in for good measure. High Society is about the war on drugs and the fact that it is well and truly lost. Like the film and TV series Traffic, it presents drugs and their personal and societal effects from a variety of perspectives and forms a map of a world paying ...
...to infiltrate all levels of the social strata and take control. The novel centers around five different characters whose lives are ruled by drugs: Peter Paget MP is in favour of the legalisation of all drugs. He sees that the war against them can never be won and believes that the only way to minimize the harm they do is to take them out of the hands of the violent criminals who control and peddle them. Commander Barry Leman also believes in legalisation. ...

sandrabarber 20.10.2003 · Read full review
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Review of High Society - Ben Elton

...excess of Hollywood and in High Society he takes on the challenge of the legalisation of drugs in the UK. The story itself is told through a series of characters all of who become linked at various times through the common interest of drugs and the impact they have had on their lives. The story opens with rock superstar Tommy Hanson explaining his recent antics at the Brit Awards to his fellow group members at an AA meeting, Hanson himself who shot ...
...sort of composite of Liam Gallagher with his Manc rhetoric and Robbie Williams based upon his lifestyle and boy band credentials, in fact using characters that have a more than passing resemblance to those in real life is a feature of this book, in fact Elton covers this by mentioning the similarities himself. In Peter Paget the crusading MP whose Private Members Bill brings the issue of legalisation into the public domain you have a number of similarities ...

atticusuk 10.06.2007 · Read full review
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Review of High Society - Ben Elton

...the law does not prosecute high profile people, as the can fford to check themselves into rehab clinics atc and leave a few weeks later claiming they are clean... However, Jessie's story shows the bottom end of the scale, where again, the law often fails to prosecute, but also fails to protect the vulnerable individuals involved in the drug-fuelled world from further abuse and problems... The comedy aspect of the book most definately comes from ...
...a serious problem, and Elton again has you wondering, if this were to happen in real life, would this proposed idea of full legalisation work? and after the arguments he presents through his characters, i have to say personally, yes it would! as one line of the book says, "who cares if there are a few more addicts in Britain, so long as you're not having your video nicked" and it is a fair point! Anyway, I've done enough talking, so I wll leave ...

classact39 28.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of High Society - Ben Elton

...same follows with the novel High Society. This is a story centred around the legalisation of all drugs and the effect that drugs have on today's society, in their current illegal status. The story depicts how the use (and abuse) of drugs is pivotal in many differing lives, ranging from a back-bench politician, who is for all intents and purposes ignored through to the teenage heroin addict forced to sell herself for the next fix. *** THE CHARACTERS ...
...of "Pop Hero" and is as arrogant and idiotic as they come. His life revolves around drinking, taking drugs and sleeping with as many women (and occassionally men) as possible. He is famous, adored by thousands and completely wasting his life. He is without a doubt modelled on a cross between the Gallagher brothers and Robbie Williams (although Elton is quick to refute this by using the names of the real-life rockstars in his story) and his character ...

sunworld 28.08.2004 · Read full review
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Review of High Society - Ben Elton