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A review by lhart2222
Dead Famous by Ben Elton
2.0
A satirical take on fame and people's obsessions with becoming famous. 10 people are thrust into a televised house, watched 24 hours a day for 63 days, as they vote each other off weekly until there’s only one left, thus winning the £500,000 prize pot. On day 27 a murder takes place, and due to circumstances, the killer has managed to remain anonymous. This reality television show becomes all too real for those left under “House Arrest”, but the show must go on. With all-time high viewing figures, who’d want to end the show there, milking every last penny Peeping Tom Productions turns this Big Brother spinoff house into a murder mystery, as the remaining contestants and police try and figure out who committed the crime.
So yes, this book is essential Big Brother on steroids, they have everything the tv show had, so we can see where the author got his idea from. With Big Brother, the main attraction of the show was the vast array of characters, and this book try’s to follow suit. With 10 contestants all with their own unique USP the author does try really hard to make them as stereotypical as possible to an almost annoying degree. I feel the over-the-top nature of the 10 “inmates” was probably a large dig and generalisation of the type of people who might want to be on the show as all 10 crave fame like a drug. This to me just came off a little bit condescending at times, with the author almost aiming jokes at the type of person rather than the character themself, creating a disconnect between the character and the story. The book feels like an excuse for the author to just write about sexism and casual racism and just brush it off as a character's personality, this felt overdone and definitely unnecessary at times.
On to the story, the premise is great, reading the blurb I was right behind it, but after reading the book I feel let down. There were two main avenues for the plot, the one of the contestants and producers and the one of the police. Constantly changing from time to time, with the indication being what day of the show we were on, it jumped back and forth and changes perspective far too often that it makes it hard to follow. I’ll start with the police, to put it bluntly, they were boring. All we did was read about them watching the show. Now the house and all surrounding it, the characters added some element of entertainment because of how over the top they were. Onto the activities and this is where the book really lost me at times, creating weird scenarios and situations just to write about a sex orgy? All this led to the murder for the payoff to be the most unbelievable pile of shite yet.
The writing style felt slow. Maybe this was down to the contents, but every time we go to the police's perspective it was like I was running in space.
Overall, the book creates great intrigue keeping you reading on and on to find out what happened, and in the end, the payoff Is just not worth it.
So yes, this book is essential Big Brother on steroids, they have everything the tv show had, so we can see where the author got his idea from. With Big Brother, the main attraction of the show was the vast array of characters, and this book try’s to follow suit. With 10 contestants all with their own unique USP the author does try really hard to make them as stereotypical as possible to an almost annoying degree. I feel the over-the-top nature of the 10 “inmates” was probably a large dig and generalisation of the type of people who might want to be on the show as all 10 crave fame like a drug. This to me just came off a little bit condescending at times, with the author almost aiming jokes at the type of person rather than the character themself, creating a disconnect between the character and the story. The book feels like an excuse for the author to just write about sexism and casual racism and just brush it off as a character's personality, this felt overdone and definitely unnecessary at times.
On to the story, the premise is great, reading the blurb I was right behind it, but after reading the book I feel let down. There were two main avenues for the plot, the one of the contestants and producers and the one of the police. Constantly changing from time to time, with the indication being what day of the show we were on, it jumped back and forth and changes perspective far too often that it makes it hard to follow. I’ll start with the police, to put it bluntly, they were boring. All we did was read about them watching the show. Now the house and all surrounding it, the characters added some element of entertainment because of how over the top they were. Onto the activities and this is where the book really lost me at times, creating weird scenarios and situations just to write about a sex orgy? All this led to the murder for the payoff to be the most unbelievable pile of shite yet.
The writing style felt slow. Maybe this was down to the contents, but every time we go to the police's perspective it was like I was running in space.
Overall, the book creates great intrigue keeping you reading on and on to find out what happened, and in the end, the payoff Is just not worth it.