An
underdog's life
James Delingpole
THE BOOK OF REVELATION by Rupert Thomson Bloomsbury, £12.99. pp. 220
While I was reading Rupert Thom- son's The Book of Revelation in my favourite local kebab house, the Kurdish owner leaned over and asked me what it was about. When I told him that it con- cerned a male dancer who gets kidnapped by three women and used as their sex slave, he gave me a big, conspiratorial grin. 'So, is a very good book then!' he said.
And I did see his point. There can't be many heterosexual males who haven't fan- tasised at some time in their lives about starring in such a delightful scenario. But unfortunately for those Loaded-reading types who are expecting a piece of high- class, male-wish-fulfilment pornography (and Bloomsbury's titillating poster cam- paign does little to discourage the hope) this isn't that kind of book. In fact, I can guarantee that once you've read it, you will never find yourself hoping to be enslaved by rampant sex vixens and forced to satisfy their every kinky desire ever again.
For a start — skip the next two para- graphs if you want to avoid plot revelations — your kidnappers are bound to want to keep their identities secret, so you'll hardly find them attractive when they've got bags over their heads. They're also likely to be that little bit more highly-strung and nervy than your average fantasy nymphet, so, chances are, your desires won't coincide with theirs — not unless your idea of fun includes spending 18 days manacled to a bed in a dingy basement, being ravaged with an enormous dildo and having a chain link inserted into your foreskin so that you can be pulled around like a dog on a lead.
Then, of course, if you're lucky enough to survive the ordeal, there's the small problem of coming back to terms with everyday life. Your jealous girlfriend is convinced you've been having an affair — which is sort of true, but if you try explain- ing why it's not your fault, she's hardly going to believe you. Nor, for that matter, will any of your friends. So there you are, having been imprisoned and tortured, unable to find any sympathy and thirsting for a revenge you'll almost certainly never enjoy because your kidnappers remain frus- tratingly anonymous. All of which goes to illustrate one of the many brilliant things about Rupert Thom- son's writing — the way he takes an extreme, absurdly implausible idea and then explores it so lucidly, calmly and logi- cally as to make it wholly believable. What could in the hands of a lesser talent have been used as a vehicle for pornographic schlock has instead become the starting point for an intelligent, unusual and some- times eerily beautiful novel about freedom, the reversal of sexual stereotypes and warped desire.
Here is a seriousauthor, then, but never so serious that he forgets the need to enter- tain, which partly explains why his last two novels, The Insult and Soft, sold 50,000 and 80,000 copies respectively. He has some- thing of the dark, cultish edge of lain Banks or Ian McEwan: his menacing Ams- terdam setting in The Book of Revelation reminded me of the louring Venice in McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers.
Thomson is that rare thing, a genuinely original talent. Reading one of his books (all of them so different in style and tone that it is sometimes hard to believe they're the work of the same man) is like entering a dreamworld, sometimes scary, sometimes beguiling, always unpredictable — and it is this unpredictability that I like best. None of the dozens of conclusions I had expected came to pass, but what did was more thrilling and shocking than anything I could ever have envisaged.
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