Tuesday, 7 December 2021

BOOK REVIEW: Pie-Eyed


TITLE: Pie-Eyed
AUTHOR: Simon Carr
PUBLISHED BY; Simon Carr

This bizarre sci-fi story, like many if not all of author Simon Carr's, is quirky, seriously funny and may not be to everyone’s taste.

Essentially, a group of pub regulars discover something alarming about the world's leaders with the help of a friendly alien salesman, Zac, a stranger they meet after hours in their pub, The Bull’s Head, who tells them the planet is in trouble. They are unsure about what he is telling them due to the amount of alcohol they’ve consumed. It's then a race against time to stop a conspiracy which would make the most determined of conspiracy theorists' heads spin. All of which is delivered with the familiar humour and straightforward honesty of writing style readers have come to expect from this author.

It is a rather crude, very rude, read, splattered with expletives, but readers who’ve read Carrs work before will be used to that. Carr has mingled together sci-fi and humour perfectly; it will have readers laugh out loud and some of the one-liners and cleverly written puns will definitely stick with them.

The story is irreverent and has very imaginative situations and resolutions to problems; readers will be kept interested until the end.

The prose is very blunt in places; I can understand that some readers may find it an offensive read due to the colourful language; there is adult language, there is adult humour but then again the book is aimed for an adult audience. Carr has created an honest, in-your-face style which is refreshingly original, displaying imaginative and down-to-earth characters.

The book has been self-published and has been produced in an unusual way which may be irritating to some readers, particularly the 'grammar and punctuation police' brigade. The page script is not justified in the usual way; there is an abundance of spelling errors; a distinct lack of use of commas in the appropriate places; regular use of commas instead of full stops which lead to lengthy sentences; random use of capital letters and the irksome habit of starting new chapters in the middle of paragraphs. I’m not sure if the book has been proof-read at all.  Added to this readers will either love or hate the dialogue.

This nonsensical farce is like Marmite; readers will either love or hate reading it.

Reviewer - Anne Pritchard


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