Kill Your Darlings

I wish this guy would write another novel. Kill Your Darlings is an absolute gem -- funny, twisted, and clever as hell. It's told from the point of view of a washed-up, one-hit-wonder writer, who now teaches at a community college and has been working interminably on a trivia book about other writers. Each turn of the page provides a hilarious, outrageous surprise. Our hero is pretentious, pedantic, preening, vain, and resentful (especially of Martin Amis, who he views as a peer, but who "affected to not remember" our hero! at a conference). To say more about this book I'd have to give away some of the delightful plot turns. Trust me, this book is a twisted riot.

Kill Your Darlings is a great find. If you are a writer, or an aspiring one, you will love the dark humor in this book, which follows an author bereft of new ideas who finds inspiration in a surprising and twisted way. I love the protagonist's sardonic humor, and the book's continuous self-referential, self-conscious remarks. As the British say, wicked fun.

Most English majors think they have a novel or two in them; after reading this book I think I want to avoid the publishing world all together. Writers can be so mean and petty toward each other! That's the impression we get from this dark look at writing and the writing lifestyle, and I loved every page of it. Blacker puts in these lists of famous writers and their quirks (what they did to unblock themselves; quips about their art) that would make a good book on their own (I guess he is working on one that will be out soon). This book is unlike anything I have ever read: Keays seems so honest and trustworthy as first person narrator, but he turns out to be pond scum. And what a surprise ending! It's one of those books where you finish it and start right back at the beginning to see if there was any inkling early on that it would end the way that it did. There isn't, I checked. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Gregory Keays is a writer whose future is, as they say, behind him. One novel, a short period spent on the "young writers to watch" list, and the only thing he has produced since is a dozen unfinished novels and a series of not-yet-published volumes about other writers. He writes a column for a writer's magazine and teaches a writing class at a local institute, while his wife has become one of London's leading interior decorators, earning far more money than he ever will. His relationship with his teenage son is terrible. Gregory's envy of those who were once, potentially, his peers has been eating his guts out for years. Most of those working writers, in his opinion, are mere authors; only he is a real "writer." This is especially true of his opinion of Martin Amis -- whom he always refers to as "Martin." (One must wonder about the true relationship between Amis and Blacker, if any. . . .) Then Peter Gibson shows up in his class and Gregory recognizes true talent. He casts himself as Peter's guide to the literary world -- and discovers the young writer has just completed an amazingly mature, groundbreaking novel. A novel that should have been his. Will be his.This book started out witty and ruefully funny; you shake your head while smiling at Gregory's corrosive ego and self-delusion. After awhile, though, he's not so funny. And by the denouement -- which I, for one, did not see coming -- he has become downright scary. This study of the decay of an admittedly intelligent man's self-image is a remarkable piece of work.