Rating: 2/5
Review:
Unsubtle and unfunny
Journalists, it has to be said, don't always make good
novelists. Some certainly do (Terry
Stisatny is a recent fine example) but I'm afraid I don’t think the same can be
said of Aleaxander Starritt and I really didn't get on with The Beast. It is intended as a satire of an
unscrupulous, bigoted and bombastic tabloid newspaper whose staff indulge in
all kinds of horrendous practices to twist, distort and outright lie in order
to create stories which will outrage their supposedly bigoted readership, boost
circulation and shift the mood of the country. Starritt has lived and worked in that world,
so it's possibly an accurate (or at least semi-accurate) picture of what goes
on, but as satire, or even a readable story, I found it sadly lacking.
The present-day story is set in the fictional newspaper from
Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, but there the comparison ends. Where Waugh is witty and scalpel sharp, I
found Starritt plodding, unfunny and very, very predictable. This isn't a new area for satire (especially
following the News International phone-hacking scandal) and The Beast felt
tired and unoriginal, with stock characters, rather a clunky feel and a story
which is sordid and depressing without the necessary leaven of wit and
clear-sighted originality which is essential in good satire. We get plenty of intricate detail of office
politics which dilutes the central story further. Starritt even makes it obvious from the
geography of The Beast's offices that it's really the Daily Mail; now the Mail
may well deserve this sort of bashing, but here it just removes more of the
subtlety required in such a book – and there wasn't much to start with.
I got thoroughly fed up with The Beast. I found it an increasing struggle to read,
increasingly unpleasant and wholly unrelieved by the humour and satire I had
hoped for. I'm sorry to be so critical,
but that's the truth and I really can't recommend it.
(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)
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