what rhymes with chaos?: A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO DYING IN INDIA BY JM DONELLAN, REVIEWED BY JM DONELLAN

It's been a busy week. I've been flat out organising the interstate tour and doing radio interviews (you know it's going to be quality airtime when the guy out of the front of the station greets you with a joint in his hand). My novel was finally released in Australia this week, and man, Oprah will just NOT GET OFF MY CASE. Seriously. Yesterday she rang me up and she was all like:

“Oh my god I loved your boooook!"

You know, with that rising voice thing she does. Let me tell you, it might be endearing to watch on your telebox but it is PAINFUL to listen to in your ear. So I was like,

"Listen Oprah, I'm actually on the last level of
Street fighter IV. Can you txt me later?"

“When can I get you on my show? I was going to have the Olsen twins on in January but their agent just called and said they'll be in rehab or prison or terrorist training camp or some crap. You free then?”

"Yeah Listen O-town I'm actually going to be in Cambodia writing the next book in January."

“Well can I at least get a review to tweet to my peeps?"
"Seriously, O-face, have you ever tried to beat Zangief on level 7? It's f**king hard. And trying to do so with an overexcited billionaire yammering on is making it a lot harder. Look, I'll write you a goddam review myself. Here tis:"

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO DYING IN INDIA

BY JM DONELLAN

(REVIEWED BY JM DONELLAN)

Look, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I wrote this. Didn’t I realise that no one reads books unless they are about vampires or wizards? Perhaps I should have written a book about a young vampire wizard on a quest to unlock an ancient mystery hidden within a famous painting whilst pursuing romance with a sexy rockstar who leads a double life as a crime scene investigator. That’d really get the money men drooling.

+ +

= best selling piece o' crap ever.

Everyone from the tweenies to gay twenty-somethings to soccer mums would be trampling over each other to get to their nearest Borders to pick that shit up. It’d probably even be adapted into a movie directed by an ex-porn star struggling to gain some credibility.

I mean, look at the vocabulary in this book. Kaleidoscopic? Prometheal? It’s like I expect people to use a dictionary, or their BRAINS or something? This book doesn’t mention twitter even once! Was it written in the middle ages? A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India has been called ‘witty and poignant.’ Poignant? When was the last time you saw an ultra-hip Gen Y scenester type the word poignant into their iphone? Never. That’s when.

"Does 'poignant' have two umlauts or three?"

My main regret is that this book took me three years to put together from having the first spark on the rooftop on a hotel in the Himalayas to telling my publishers to ‘shove it’ when they wanted me to tweak the final chapter so that it featured a sex scene occurring in a helicopter as the heroes escaped the exploding casino. It makes me cry to think of all the things I could have done in that time. I could have learned jujitsu, how to juggle flaming chainsaws, or how to make a clarinet out of a carrot.

You know, stuff that would impress girls, instead of sitting in front of a laptop for weeks on end bathing in my own sweat and trying to think a better metaphor than ‘more out of place than the pope at a sex convention.’ (Suggestions?) I give this book sixteen thumbs down. Which is slightly better than the rating I gave the Twilight series, and slightly worse than the rating I gave for this guy’s moustache:

"It's Movember all year round in my world bitches! PS: you can get the book here if you to write your own scathing review, or if you need something to hide your face from that creepy guy that always sits opposite from you on the bus. Yeah, you know the one I'm talking about."