John Woodd, former Newspaper Editor. (New Zealand)

How do you write a serious review about a satirical novel whose over-the-top plot and style is based on total nonsense?

 

 

This is confronting me after having just finished Alastair Carthew’s Divine’s Choice (Life After the Windsors is All Black),which feels like a blend of the likes of Spike Milligan, Ben Elton, Fred Dagg, Monty Python and so on, tinged with some of the more extreme British monarchy gossip-columnists, plenty of borderline porn and glad-wrapped in good old Kiwi and Maori humour liberally sprinkled with gags, corn, puns and irreverence.

 

There’s much-unashamed name-dropping, cities and towns have been renamed subtly (readers may recognise specific locations), and there is considerable spontaneous bonking in odd places. It will require too many spoilers to reveal more, but the action and partying are relentless, along with plot twists and turns that will keep you riveted until the last of 425 pages. Doing anything with humour is a highly specialised skill.

 

This is a complex book with many threads to tie together that will have been challenging, and getting it published is a significant achievement.