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| Single White Failure |
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| Category: |
Fiction |
| Author: |
G.J.H. Sibson |
| Publisher: |
AuthorHouse |
| Price: |
£8.10 |
| ISBN: |
1-420883-18-6 |
| Pages: |
248 |
| Reviewed in issue: |
2 |
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One of the arguments against self publishing is that it encourages potentially talented writers to expose their work to the public before it is ready – in other words, properly thought out and edited. This novel is a striking example of just why that criticism has validity.
The title, Single White Failure, is a clever play on the movie, Single White Female, because the novel is largely about threatening females (though none are psychopaths like the female lead in the movie). The author, however, is actually trying a novel reversal on the movie Alfie by having his protagonist (and his skirt-chasing friends, other hopeful seducers) being repeatedly seduced by – and, therefore, intimidated by – the new breed of financially and sexually independent women.
Alas, the novel fails – not because the author lacks talent, but because he published it before letting his talent fully ripen. This novel, while occasionally amusing, lacks plot and structure, offers only the most basic characterisations, and, until the last two chapters, produces hardly a human being worth knowing.
All the characters, male and female alike, seem to exist solely to find either a one-night-stand or a long-term sexual partner: they have no interior lives or moral values beyond that. Even worse: the manuscript was clearly not properly edited and the punctuation in the finished book is atrocious. (The author doesn’t seem to know the difference between a full stop and a comma.) The cover, with its amateurish black and white lettering and single-line, sex-symbol drawing, is equally dire.
This is a pity, because in some of the descriptive passages the author’s potential talent shines through. |
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