Want a NOOK? Explore Now
"Lights Out in Wonderland has all the verbal wit and energy of Vernon God Little."—Financial Times
Gabriel Brockwell—aesthete, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent—is thinking terminal. He's decided to kill himself—but not immediately. His destination is Wonderland. The style of the journey is all that's to be decided.
Traveling between London, Tokyo, and Berlin, Gabriel is in search of the bacchanal to obliterate all previous parties. His adventure takes in a spell in rehab, a near-death experience eating a poisonous Japanese delicacy, and finally an orgiastic feast in the bowels of Berlin's majestic Tempelhof Airport. Along the way, Gabriel falls apart, only to reemerge with a new outlook on the world and a mission to right his past wrongs.
Lights Out in Wonderland is an allegorical banquet, a sly commentary on these End Times and the march toward banality, and a joyful expression of the human spirit.
Man Booker winner Pierre (Ludmila's Broken English,2006, etc.) continues on his polarizing way with another extreme adventure, this one undertaken by a narrator who plans to kill himself.
Readers may not feel too terrible about that, since Gabriel, like Pierre's protagonist inVernon God Little(2002), is initially as obnoxious as he is motor-mouthed. Just checked into rehab by his father, Gabriel puffs defiantly on cigarettes while ranting about capitalism and messing with the staff. Soon he slips away for a final pre-suicide bacchanal with his best friend Smuts, who's working at an ultra-exclusive Tokyo restaurant that serves poisonous (and illegal)fuguto those who can afford it. Unfortunately, once Gabriel gets done loading him up with coke and booze, Smuts recklessly takes the challenge of a customer who wants the fish's extra-toxic liver. The customer winds up in the hospital, and Smuts in jail. The only way Gabriel can spring him is by getting Smuts' shadowy "sponsor," Didier Le Basque, to pull strings. And the only way to do that is to convince Didier, who makes a fortune creating one-of-a-kind banquets for rich thrill-seekers, that Gabriel can connect him to a unique venue. So off Gabriel goes to Berlin, where his detested father had a club in the 1990s. Things get even crazier when Gabriel actually does discover the perfect spot for a decadent feast: miles of tunnels and bunkers built for the Third Reich underneath Tempelhof Airport. Even as he enthusiastically participates in the excesses of Didier's right-hand man Thomas, who's arranging the bash in the bunkers, Gabriel is developing a guilty conscience about the whole affair. Can it be that our hero is growing up? Well, yes: Gabriel eventually drops his intended suicide, along with several other affectations of youth, though Pierre does feel obliged to provide an over-the-top finale involving fireworks both gastronomic and incendiary.
Considerably more mature than its predecessors, and just as scathingly brilliant with words, but this author is definitely an acquired taste.
"Mexico, with its contrasts, its crushing poverty and sparkling wealth, its institutionalised corruption and cultural wisdom, its love of life and its embracing of death, undoubtedly set me on a path toward the deep end, philosophically and emotionally speaking. A fast and careless life had put me in tune with the common man, for whom a throw of the dice would mean life or death. When, as a teenager, I set out for Texas to bring cars over the border, I saw that the same divides applied to the richest country on earth. Truest kinship was found in a group of homeless derelicts who camped under a bridge beside where I used to stay. It is in their broken-down lives that the seeds for Vernon were planted."
DBC Pierre has worked as a designer and cartoonist and currently lives in Ireland. Vernon God Little, his first novel, was awarded the 2003 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and the Booker Prize.
Author biography courtesy of Faber and Faber Ltd.
During his dark years of gambling and drug addiction, he once even sold the house of his best friend—and stole the proceeds.
In addition, he ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by taking part in a scheme to find Montezuma's gold in Mexico.
He has said that the £50,000 check awarded with the Booker Prize would go about one-third of the way to settling his outstanding debts.
Pierre landed a publishing deal for his first novel one hour before the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September, 11, 2001. "Ever since, I feel like there's some dark destiny swirling around the book," he said.
Anonymous
Posted April 2, 2012
Sorry, but this is the sillest, tritest writing I have read in a long time. The author just regurgitates tired old "anti capitalism" nonsense that we have heard for years. The thing reads like he copied text from protest phamplets and strung them together with a hint of a story. The narrator of the story comes across as an emotionally retarded young man who would feel right at home among the self indulgent nitwits of the sixties. Like most of them, he fancies himself smarter and better than the rest of humanities poor slobs who just go about their lives accepting their responsibilies. Something too mundane for our poor little mistreated hero.
Do not waste your money on this garbage.
I guess you have to be a fan of the author to get his writing. I couldn't get into this story of a twenty-something wanting to kill himself but yet writes a travelogue of his adventures across the globe. With footnotes and recipes, it was witty at times, but more confusing to me than enjoyable.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted October 2, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
"Lights Out in Wonderland has all the verbal wit and energy of Vernon God Little."—Financial Times
Gabriel Brockwell—aesthete, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent—is thinking terminal. He's decided to kill himself—but not immediately. His destination is Wonderland. The style of the journey is all that's to be decided.
...