This story skips the authorial wink “look at what I’m doing now” – like in the story Flytopia where there’s a town called Inwardleigh (inwardly – get it?). In this story too – to take just one example – a character wears a foulard tie. If it was a blue and red striped tie I’d think ‘Hmm, why is that significant?” But a foulard tie tells me I’m not as clever as Will Self. By the time a character stops off to buy pork sausages I’m thinking, what? No coarse-cut Cumberlands with thyme?

He’s great for abartig moments of perception – the crows in a park are described as:

In their greasy, feathercapes of grey and black, they might be avine impersonators, hustling a sexual practice founded on fluttering and paid for in peanuts.

Love it or hate it, Will is a meister at glossarial overkill:

Well past its fashionable sell-by date, the hotel’s décor retailed a series of dazzlingly crass decadences, which Travis knew provided salience for his own sepia image.

Deuce to him for throwing out stories based on on some juvenile speculative premise. I too would love to write a story about bluebottles taking over the world, the mind of a two-year-old being swapped with that of a businessman, a twist in the universe so suddenly everybody’s name is Dave. Sounds like nineteen fifties sci-fi fun. But it’s not that way with Will. The plot seems secondary to the linguistic special effects, the show of bravado, a coke-turboed ad-lib exhibition.

Here’s a few new words I learned:

moue    ultramontanism    rentier    bias cut    orchidaceous    with dispatch    obloquy    purlieus    louring    electrolier    foulard    empyrean    as well as plenty that I did understand, (amn’t I clever) like adipose, agglutinative, Besserwessi, idiolect, ziggurat, velveteen, liveried, bodice, wisteria, eidetic, deliquesce, amniocentesis.

Now to read some reviews on google . . . seems like his name is genuine. What an advantage in life to have.