Tim's reaction to "The Book of Dave"

My simple reaction: WOW!

A more in-depth response: I don't tend to look at books from as academic a point of view as Mac does, as my interest lies more in how a book feels and what it means than what it actually says or how it says it, even though one could claim that the study of the philosophy of a book is just as valid as the study of its mechanics. That aside, I found this book to be one of the best feeling and most meaningful books that I've ever read.

The pace of the book was spectacular. Normally I chip away at a book over the course of weeks or even months, but I was lucky enough to read most of this book while I was on my way to Singapore and on the return flight. The pace of the book was so compelling that I didn't want to put it down. There were no lulls -- each plot point flowed freely into the other. It was believable and never caused me to step back and say, "what the?!," even though it was fantastical enough to make me know that it was a fiction, and that it was an attempt at making a statement.

I loved the alternating narratives. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the story moved between plot points with ease, even jumping between narratives more naturally than I expected. Questions were asked in narrative and answered in the other. There were surprises in one that made me love the other.

As far as how I actually felt about the story, the word I walked away with was "hopeful." Now, I'm a religious person, and this story did have a bit of an anti-religious smack at times. There was an undercurrent of a "your religion was made up by the most random person in the most random happenstance imaginable" attitude, but I still felt like Will Self was attempting to instill hope through it all. You could sense the authoer's struggles with religious identity, but even through all that I had the feeling that he WANTS to believe something, and that more than that he believes the tenets of a faith are worth mentioning outside of the context of religion. I read the scriptures because they help me to relate godly lessons into my own life, and, while not a spiritual text or religious work, "The Book of Dave" struck the right chord for me at the right time in my life.

Some pages made me emotional -- Dave's pain was palpable. His discouragement was visible, his anger was noted on every page. That's what I look for when I read a book -- a visual and emotional representation of another life. In this sense, the book was perfect. In many senses, it was one of the best books I've ever read.