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If, gentle reader, in your typically bloodthirsty, puzzle-seeking way, you are looking for menace, deep characterisation and hair-raising thrills, might I suggest that you look elsewhere than at GOING LOCO by Lynne Truss? The cruelly witty writer of MAKING THE CAT LAUGH and EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES (yes it IS possible to make punctuation interesting) has invented a tale and a cast of characters which, if representative of the population of London or Sweden, will ensure I never seek to revisit either place. Belinda Johannson is a freelance literary critic and creative writer. She is married to Swede Stefan and she is also the home of Neville, the bespangled acrobatic rat that lives in her tummy, practising backflips and other assorted athletic feats when Belinda is under pressure. Belinda is constantly under pressure. If she manages to catch up on her writing (but the work on her chef d'oeuvre on literary doubles never manages to progress despite her output on her popular children's books keeping her budget afloat) she is never able to do her housework. She has a cleaning lady, Mrs Holdsworth, who, somehow, never actually keeps the house clean. Thus, when Belinda and Stefan go to a dinner party hosted by Viv and Jago, the author doesn't have many scruples when she steals Viv's cleaning lady Linda. At the same dinner party, Belinda's best friend Maggie is introduced to sportswriter Leon. Presumably Lynne Truss's experience in Leon's world had some input into her creation of this character. Linda deserts the household of anaesthetist Viv for whom she had performed acts going well beyond normal cleaning duties. Suddenly, Belinda discovers that Neville the Rat has deserted her as effectively as Linda has deserted Viv and removed all pressures from the writer. Now Belinda is free to concentrate on writing the book about doubles! To Belinda's great delight, Linda takes over the responsibility of Belinda's rather unpleasant plastic surgeried mother as well as all Belinda's publicity engagements. Belinda no longer needs deal with her sleazy agent, either -- Linda has fired him. Then the doubles begin to infiltrate the book. Of whom is Stefan the bizarre double? Who is this Noel who so strangely resembles Maggie's admirer Leon? And has Stefan ever produced a successful clone? If the reader can stop laughing for long enough, she can well be forgiven for accusing Ms Truss of writing a comedic masterpiece. She gets in many sly digs at all kinds of people, from writers to scientists and cleaning ladies. One can only wonder, as one reads through, which strange and unexpected byways the internally logical plot will meander on the way to a fantastically illogical conclusion.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, August 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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