Review: Just brilliant!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 20, 2012
I've been meaning to read Jonathan Gould's work for some time but a combination of being a slow reader and have a big TBR pile have delayed me until now. Doodling came with a wave of positive reviews and reached the semi-finals of the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards for Humour so clearly it had something going for it. I was intrigued to find out what.The story focuses on Neville Lansdowne who is not having a great day. The world has been moving too fast of late, so fast that Neville simply cannot keep up anymore. Though he does try to hang onto the world Neville ends up having to let go. He finds himself in an asteroid field where a series of weird and wonderful characters have ended up after they too couldn't keep up with the world anymore. When Neville meets Helen, who maintains a garden on her asteroid, she informs him that the world is moving so fast it is going to break free of its gravitational pull and end up smashing through the asteroids. Neville must work fast to unite the bizarre inhabitants of the asteroid field and save the day.Mr Gould has termed his style of writing as dag-lit, believing it doesn't really fall into any genre and demands a section of its own. I have to say I agree with him on this. As I read through the opening pages of Doodling I found myself thinking this is very random. The absurdity of Alice in Wonderland and Monty Python immediately drag you away from reality and into a fascinating group of societies that are trying to bloom on the asteroids. Helen cannot stop maintaining her garden because if she does the flowers will die. There is a society of people that worship a toaster, longing for the day when one comes to the asteroids so they can enjoy toast, even though there is nowhere to plug it in. Another couple are celebrating all the major events of the year all at once with a strange substitute for champagne, while my favourites were undoubtedly the three cyclists locked in a constant race and their shared philosophy on victory and defeat means they can never stop competing, not that this is picked up by them!On the face of it Doodling is just purely bizarre but Jonathan Gould is too clever a writer to just throw random ideas at us. There is a subtext to the novel. I particularly enjoyed Neville creating his own world on an asteroid and calling it Bolivia and having a rock for the president. It all seems so easy to build a nation but then reason takes over and Neville realises it's more complicated than he imagined. The toaster worshippers eventually divide and begin their own faiths dedicated to different household appliances and their path becomes the only path, no willingness to embrace or listen to anyone else's point of view.Is there anything wrong with Doodling? There is, it's far too short. You can easily read this in one sitting and although the book's length is a downside, it is the only criticism I have because I wanted more adventures from Neville. Hopefully he may return if Mr Gould chooses to revisit this storyline. That minor grumble aside I found Doodling to be very funny, random, wonderful and with some thought-provoking messages lurking beneath the bizarre surface.Doodling is worth all the good reviews and more. Yes, a lot of it is nonsense but that's what makes it so good. It's great to just be able to sit back and enjoy a book rather than analysing every segment for accuracy and logic. If this novel is what we call dag-lit then I hope the genre really takes off.