Billing itself as a comedy set in the world of magazine publishing, the novel follows a vain, arrogant magazine editor as she sits in the afterlife and relives the days leading up to her demise. The result is Absolutely Fabulous with more sex and swearing. The difficulty with comic exaggeration, though, is that it's a tool which has to be used carefully for fear of removing any trace of humanity and turning into Tom Sharpe. If the characters have no humanity then it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to identify with them or to care about the outcome of the story. Rather than get involved in the narrative you find yourself tuning in and out, waiting for the next bit of gratuitous sex.
Sex permeates the novel.
By the time the token homosexual is photographed performing fellatio on a cub reporter in a beach hut the effect of so much sex talk is numbing rather than amusing or arousing, as cold and emotionless as cheap pornography. If anything it's faintly embarrassing, like your grandmother drinking too much sherry and trying to kiss you with tongues. The whole thing trundles along towards a denoument which calls forth more stock characters from the Big Box of British Farce - corrupt mayors, wizened fortune tellers and leery locals. Inevitably there's a twist and the novel draws to a close with the narrator briefly accepting that the world does not revolve around her after all. Victor Olliver is clearly intelligent and, if he'd toned down the farcical elements just one notch, his debut could well have turned out to be a biting satire on the fashion industry, a British rival to Brett Easton Ellis' Glamorama .