Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry

This book felt like somewhere between an argumentative essay on the state of fiction and an actual story - but it was wound wondefully together. Managed to make me laugh out loud a few times, which I don't do very often when reading books; mostly because the author managed to twist things so violently away from what I was expecting to read.Very self-referential, but somehow gets away with it completely. Original idea to write about, and an nteresting style of writing that made me want to go and discover more of his work.

B.S. Johnson is the most important writer you've never heard of. read his books, learn the truth you little cryptorchid.

BS Johnson is one of those experimental writers, controversial during their lives that subsequently vanishes from print. Johnson was a journalist, a socialist, and a fine novelist. Best known for The Unfortunates (his book in a box where every chapter is separately bound and the reader is invited to read them in any order he or she wishes), Christie Malry's Own Double Entry is perhaps his most accessible novel. However, this "accessibility" is in the midst of a studiedly experimental text. This is a corruscating satire in which Johnson targets one of the symbols of capitalism, the double entry system. The very basis of accountancy, and the manipulation of finance, Johnson turns this building block on its head as his central character, Christie Malry, a young man with a future, decides that he will live his life accoridng to the principles of double entry.Johnson's novel has acute observations on a variety of issues in British life that still merit comment. How working class people come to vote conservative, the manner in which people's worth is measured financially; and all of this is in the midst of an angry satire where Malry wreaks vengeance on the system. It is a bitter cycnical novel, with a dark wit.There is love, sex, and death; and an unusual use for shaving foam. And all of this is presented in a slightly distant way, where Johnson continually turns to the reader and winks, letting you know this is a novel. Characters are aware of their place in fiction, and Johnson deconstructs the novel to let you see how it works.This description may be off putting, but this is classy fiction. It is funny, and angry. I enjoyed this work, but preferred Johnson's The Unfortunates; which I feel has more depth, and more humanity.If you enjoyed this you may like Graham Greene's Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party or Michael Dibdin's Dirty Tricks (a Thatcherite satire).

I read Christie Malry's Own Double Entry when I was about 15 - I got it from the local library as it is generally out of print in the UK, a tribute to British library services in the 1970s and no tribute to British publishing at any time - and I had never, and still haven't ever, read anything like it. Its "experimental" qualities - distancing, irony, the extraordinary ending - descend from Laurence Sterne and all that but Johnson's tone - political, cynical and above all very funny - was all his own. Christie Malry should have been the first in a line of great novels instead of the last. With luck, Johnson fan and influencee Jonathan Coe's forthcoming biog and the reprint of The Unfortunates should see a mass reprint of Johnson's work that will overwhelm the cack-faced sludge of manky novels about people with trust funds pretending to be interesting in West London.David Quantick, London March 6 1999

This is a small gem of a book by an underappreciated writer (1933-73). The short novel centers around a simple man who decides to live his life according to the principles of Double-Entry Bookkeeping, which he adapts in startling ways to settle his accounts with society. Johnson liked to experiment with fictional forms; here, as in his handful of other works, he plays games with the reader, mocking and fragmenting the traditional novel. That sort of thing can easily drop into post-modernist preciousness, but the book is redeemed by Johnson's mordant, unsparing wit. The book's back cover even includes praise from the notoriously exacting Samuel Beckett. I hope you'll agree with Sam and me that this is a wonderfully comic book.