“You’re all wrong, bruv. This ain’t for you.”
“What on earth do you mean? It’s for everyone, you silly
arse.”
Since beginning this blog last
year, I’ve very much come to enjoy writing the music reviews that I post
semi-regularly. The process of getting into something, establishing the best
and worst elements of it, and determining how it all contributes to its overall
success is very satisfying – and with that in mind, I figured that as a keen
reader I could also turn my hand to books. Not that this is going to become a
book-reviewing blog – my main focus will always be music – but whenever a novel
is released that is relevant to the genre of electro swing I’m known for writing
on, it’s certainly worth my curiosity. As with my music reviews, it will of
course be appropriate for me to publish these reviews as and when their
respective release is first being put out, but this initial post will be an
exception. Mr B’s Roast Beef was published towards the end of 2018, but
for whatever reason, I’ve only just gotten around to reading it.
Roast Beef is a delightful
little read which tells a story from Mr B’s own fictionalised perspective, upon
discovering that an up-and-coming rapper, Cheeky G, has been publicly dissing
him. Shocked, our eponymous hero gathers a posse of unusual and eccentric
friends, including Acid Edward – a man with a perfectly spherical head, and no
facial features other than his eyes and moustache – and Superdickie – perennially
dressed as a Mexican wrestler – to confront the young rapper. The novel is told
is a particularly silly and humourous manner, a comedy style that can be
exemplified by the following exchange between Mr B and his wife, Lady C:
“The usual…”,
she said with a raised eyebrow. She said it with her mouth of course, but it
was the raised eyebrow that spoke the loudest.
There’s an obvious love and pride
for his music as well, which is clear from some carefully written passages on
the subject. In one scene, in which Mr B is forlornly playing his ukelele
alone, he describes “the sort of chords to soothe a chap, rather than get him
all worked up. Not too many 7ths and certainly nothing too diminished”. In another
chapter, our narrator questions whether he is “the only one of one’s crew who
really cared about the integrity of Chap-Hop?”.
Beneath all the musical offshoots
and comic silliness, the story is essentially a metaphorical means of Mr B –
the real Mr B – confronting his critics. Represented by Cheeky G, this
character’s criticism of Mr B revolves around the idea that a chap such
as our protagonist – with his love for tweed, cricket, and the finer things in
life – should not be allowed to engage with the genre of hip hop. Consequently,
Mr B responds in a way to expose all the hypocrisies of such a position,
insisting that hip hop should be welcome to everyone, and that the music he creates
constitutes a stimulating new direction for the genre. It’s a clever way of
making such a point, and the author is certainly successful in his execution.
Roast Beef is a thoroughly
enjoyable novel, not at all challenging, and can be easily digested in the
space of an afternoon. Whilst there were several grammatical and punctuation
errors throughout – at one point, a character’s name switches from Keith to
Leith for one brief sentence – this is somewhat par for the course in self-publishing,
and I can’t criticise the author too heavily. The story was amusing, the
language whimsical, and I also appreciated the humourous illustrations that
introduced each chapter. An entertaining first novel, and showcasing Mr B to be
consistently adept across the art forms.
No comments:
Post a Comment