High Society - Ben Elton

Advantages: Clever use of Characters, Layout, local dialects
Disadvantages: You may not agree with the content, dialects!

...TV show through to his high profile Concerts and appearances at the Brits telling tales of drugs, sex and of course rock and roll. We follow the recent course of his life learning about the ups and downs of celebrity and how his alcoholism and drug use landed him in the meetings he attends. Next we have Peter Paget, an ambitious Labour back bencher, happily married with two kids in an upmarket area of the country. Paget has a radical stance on the ...
...the support of someone very high up in the Police force and events happen that turns his private members bill into front page news and he gradually gets the support of the nation. Jessie is a young runaway girl from Glasgow and we first meet her fresh of the bus in London. We follow her story as she is dragged into the world of prostitution after being given the chance to ‘just try’ some heroin. She starts off as a pimps whore however after trying ... Read review

Advantages: An honest and thought provoking book. Very well written.
Disadvantages: Very controversial and totally unsuitable for children.

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 ... Read review

Advantages: easy too read
Disadvantages: too easy

...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. ... Read review

Advantages: Fast paced and well structured
Disadvantages: Not as funny as some of his other work

...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 ... Read review

Advantages: Ben Elton is a genius...
Disadvantages: Never want to put his books down...time consuming!

...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 ... Read review

Advantages: construction, style, satire
Disadvantages: lack of wider picture, unrealistic and unlikeable main character

...Gibson’s ‘Pattern Recognition’; Martin Amis’ ‘Money’ and Ben Elton’s ‘High Society’. It is decidedly better written than Elton (worse than the other two though), has definitely less obnoxious protagonists than ‘Money’ and falls very short of the way Gibson managed to put his finger on the pulse of today. To me it lacked breadth and wider picture as well as trying to make me feel sorry for a narrow, self-centred character whose misery seemed to me very much self-inflicted. And I don’t believe in redeeming power of love, so the resolution offered was entirely unconvincing. On the other hand it was intricately constructed, has fairly compelling story, well designed secondary characters, interesting imagery and rather wonderful, scathing description of the American... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Great characters, amusing
Disadvantages: not hard to put down

...back ground with Chart Throb written in neon lighting and a huge microphone. If you didn't already know what the book was about it would make you pick it up at least to have a read of the blurb. The Author Ben Elton has had a vast career not only has he wrote award winning TV shows, Young Ones and Blackadder , to name a couple he is himself a hugely successful stand up comic. He has written three hit westend plays, Gasping, Silly Cow and Popcorn (based on his novel). He wrote and directed the film Maybe Baby (based on his novel Inconceivable) and written three stage musicals including We Will Rock You which he created with Queen. By The Same Author Novels: Stark Gridlock The Other Eden Popcorn Blast from The Past Inconceivable Dead Famous High Society Past Mortem The First Casualty Blind Faith Plays: Gasping Silly... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: fantastic story - fast pace - really good read!
Disadvantages: none!!

...they were real people at one point! & even started feeling genuine sympathy for them!!.. I think Ben Elton has done a fantastic job of this - as soon as i read this book i went out and got 'High Society' which is equally as amazing as this!!... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful