"Carl Devush, spindle-shanked, bleach blond, lampburnt, twelve years old, kicked up bluff puffs of sand with his bare feet as he scampered along the path from the manor."
Description:
"When East End cabdriver Dave Rudman's wife takes from him his ownly son, Dave pens a gripping text--a compilation about everything from the environment, Arabs, and American tourists to sex, Prozac and cabby lore--that captures all his frustrations and anxieties about his contemporary world. Dave buries the book in his ex-wife's Hampstead backyard, intending it for his son, Carl when he comes of age.
Five hundred years later, Dave's book is found by the inhabitants of Ham, a primitive archipelago in post-apocalyptic London, where it becomes a sacred text of biblical proportions and the template for a new civilization. Only one islander, Symum, remains incredulous. But, after he is imprisoned for heresy, his son Carl must journey through the Forbidden Zone and into the terrifying heart of New London to find the only thing that will reveal the truth once and for all: a second Book of Dave that repudiates the first.
Equal parts dystopian fantasy, religious allegory, detective story, and tribute to the sometimes fraught relations between fathers and sons, The Book of Dave is a profound meditation upon the nature of religion and a caustic satire of contemporary life." -- from the inside flap
My thoughts:
This was a complex and gripping book about family, madness, love and religion, with a new vocabulary to get used to from the beginning. At first, I wasn't sure I liked the book, but the story soon caught my interest and I wanted to learn more about Dave and the future inhabitants of Ham.
Date read: 4/25/2014
Book #: 14
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Genre: Fiction
ISBN-10: 1596911239
ISBN-13: 9781596911239
Publisher: Bloomsbury, USA
Year: 2006
# of pages: 416
Binding: Hardcover
LibraryThing page
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