Bigot Hall

Steve Aylett

Some of the occupants of Bigot Hall:

The narrator (sometimes called "laughing boy") who had an imaginary playmate when he was small "who bullied me constantly until I shoved him into the lake and held his head under. When the bubbles stopped I felt immensely relieved. The bastard had been making my life hell for years".

Adrienne, his sister and girlfriend, who had discovered that "deja vu could be induced by arranging to have a condescending moron tell her something she already knew".

Uncle Burst, whose "notions were as inconspicuous as a bayonet" and who believes his entire face to be made of pasta.

Father, who had "built the Hall on the site of an old country church, not in dedication but to prevent the church from happening again."

And Uncle Snapper who used to go into the woods "for the exclusive purpose of killing anything larger than his own brain".

If any of that sounds like your cup of tea, then read Steve Aylett. If you do pick it up it just might be the weirdest book you read this year (unless you're the Rev).

As for me, well I liked it in bits. I can't help preferring Steve Aylett when he is in Beerlight, the futuristic, gun-infested American-style city ("the city of all our futures") - his setting for The Crime Studio and its sequels. Bigot Hall doesn't work quite so well. Sure the prose is wonderfully insane but the setting is far from original. Dysfunctional gothic family plus hangers-on living in a country mansion. Feared and loathed by the locals. Addams Family, anyone? Cold Comfort Farm? Gormenghast? Perhaps Aylett is sending up the send-ups. Perhaps it's a Russian doll thing (actually there is a reference to this in Bigot Hall, a castle by a lake with an island on which stands a castle by a lake with an island etc). But is humour supposed to be that much hard work? Aylett's answer would undoubtedly be "yes". He wants our brains to hurt.