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Time of Lies: A Political Satire
Bob Grant, former football hooligan, now the charismatic leader of the Britain s Great party ( Britain s Great! End of!) has swept to power on a populist tide. With his itchy finger hovering over the nuclear trigger, Bob presides over a brave new Britain where armed drones fill the skies, ex-bankers and foreigners are vilified, and the Millwall football chant No one likes, we don t care has become an unofficial national anthem.
Meanwhile, Bob s under-achieving, Guardian-reading brother Zack gets a tap on the shoulder from a shady Whitehall mandarin. A daring plot is afoot to defy the will of the people and unseat the increasingly unstable PM. Can Zack stop his brother before he launches a nuclear strike on Belgium? And just what is ACERBIC, Britain s most closely-guarded military secret?
A darkly comic political thriller, Time of Lies is also a terrifyingly believable portrait of an alternative Britain. It couldn t happen here... could it?
Meanwhile, Bob s under-achieving, Guardian-reading brother Zack gets a tap on the shoulder from a shady Whitehall mandarin. A daring plot is afoot to defy the will of the people and unseat the increasingly unstable PM. Can Zack stop his brother before he launches a nuclear strike on Belgium? And just what is ACERBIC, Britain s most closely-guarded military secret?
A darkly comic political thriller, Time of Lies is also a terrifyingly believable portrait of an alternative Britain. It couldn t happen here... could it?
- GenresFiction
305 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 25, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 11, 2024
Really didn't like this one unfortunately. (Spoilers ahead)
I've never read anything quite like it, comprehension wise. The writing itself is OK but I truly struggled to follow it - maybe just a me problem or because of the time I was reading it but this has never been a problem with any other book I've read to quite the same degree.
Firstly the names, on a few occasions people were mentioned and I had no clue who they were. This will be because a) their introductions weren't particularly memorable and b) many of the characters don't have a distinct personality as such. With the exception of Bob Grant (who was the only character, to a degree, I found interesting to read about) they were all more or less the same. I couldn't really tell you anything about Zack and Kathy (who are the main characters) other than what would appear in a 2-page synopsis of the book, never mind all the side characters. Some of the characters have quite similar names too, 'Alison' and 'Angela', 'Zack' and 'Zilf' I think were their names, so that didn't help either.
On a similar note to the characters being similar, basically all the characters were on the side of 'clarity' i.e. anti the fascist BG party. And so for a novel that calls itself a satire, little do we see of any farce or irony, it would appear Bob winning the election occurs totally in isolation, this alternative vision of Britain was never fleshed out to me, there was never any sense of what had led to this point or how people around him thought. the setting doesn't convince you it would allow a man like Bob Grant to get in power. it was also very dreary for a satire - I'd expect some whimsy, you know, a bit of fun but it just doesn't come across. The comedy itself is OK but very occasional - I wouldn't say this is a comic novel, rather a thriller with characters who occasionally make witty comments.
But back to the writing being confusing, because I was just utterly confused half the time it was hard to enjoy this is a thriller. it's quite important to know what's going on if you want to be surprised or excited by anything and sometimes it felt as if I'd just missed a whole page between one plot point and the next. But then I'd go back and check and as far as my limited attention span for this book could take it, the context just wasn't there. There's a saying in writing to write drunk and edit sober, this feels very much that it was written drunk but that there was no editing - or whoever edited it had decided to move onto drugs. Why did Zack and Bob really hate each other THAT much, anyway? I guess the murder didn't help.. wait, WHAT murder - what the hell was even that? Zach's going to spend several months learning how to impersonate his brother so he can resign to the king while the real Bob is drugged and taken to an orgy - is this really the only possible route of salvation available to the MI5, or the author??? Questions I don't know the answer to.
So yes, it was all very confusing and not brilliantly fleshed out. Which is a shame as I do like political thrillers. It could've been a little better with tighter editing, but I don't know... the story as far as I could make sense of it just wasn't doing it
I've never read anything quite like it, comprehension wise. The writing itself is OK but I truly struggled to follow it - maybe just a me problem or because of the time I was reading it but this has never been a problem with any other book I've read to quite the same degree.
Firstly the names, on a few occasions people were mentioned and I had no clue who they were. This will be because a) their introductions weren't particularly memorable and b) many of the characters don't have a distinct personality as such. With the exception of Bob Grant (who was the only character, to a degree, I found interesting to read about) they were all more or less the same. I couldn't really tell you anything about Zack and Kathy (who are the main characters) other than what would appear in a 2-page synopsis of the book, never mind all the side characters. Some of the characters have quite similar names too, 'Alison' and 'Angela', 'Zack' and 'Zilf' I think were their names, so that didn't help either.
On a similar note to the characters being similar, basically all the characters were on the side of 'clarity' i.e. anti the fascist BG party. And so for a novel that calls itself a satire, little do we see of any farce or irony, it would appear Bob winning the election occurs totally in isolation, this alternative vision of Britain was never fleshed out to me, there was never any sense of what had led to this point or how people around him thought. the setting doesn't convince you it would allow a man like Bob Grant to get in power. it was also very dreary for a satire - I'd expect some whimsy, you know, a bit of fun but it just doesn't come across. The comedy itself is OK but very occasional - I wouldn't say this is a comic novel, rather a thriller with characters who occasionally make witty comments.
But back to the writing being confusing, because I was just utterly confused half the time it was hard to enjoy this is a thriller. it's quite important to know what's going on if you want to be surprised or excited by anything and sometimes it felt as if I'd just missed a whole page between one plot point and the next. But then I'd go back and check and as far as my limited attention span for this book could take it, the context just wasn't there. There's a saying in writing to write drunk and edit sober, this feels very much that it was written drunk but that there was no editing - or whoever edited it had decided to move onto drugs. Why did Zack and Bob really hate each other THAT much, anyway? I guess the murder didn't help.. wait, WHAT murder - what the hell was even that? Zach's going to spend several months learning how to impersonate his brother so he can resign to the king while the real Bob is drugged and taken to an orgy - is this really the only possible route of salvation available to the MI5, or the author??? Questions I don't know the answer to.
So yes, it was all very confusing and not brilliantly fleshed out. Which is a shame as I do like political thrillers. It could've been a little better with tighter editing, but I don't know... the story as far as I could make sense of it just wasn't doing it
June 4, 2019
*I received a free copy of this book with thanks to the author and Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources blog tours. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*
Book’s great! End of.
Except that much like the traditional politicians I can’t possibly stop with just the soundbite and must instead expound in more detail upon that very simple point. Unlike many politicians, I will be telling the truth!
Time of Lies is a scathing satire on British, and world, politics. Douglas Board effortlessly blends together actions we are seeing unfold right now in Britain, Europe and the USA with historical lessons that we should have learnt (but apparently not) to create a terrifying scenario which feels minutes away from actually becoming a memoir of current events.
Here we see a post-Brexit Britain, riven by in-fighting and abashed by the mockery of other countries turning away from traditional politicians and their machinations to elect a ‘common man’. A man who says it straight. A man who offers simple solutions to complex problems. A man who talks tough and carries knife scars. Bob Grant. Meanwhile the civil service establishment desperately plots to minimise the damage of giving nuclear codes and foreign diplomacy over to the sort of man who hires his cab driver to be Minister for Transport, and Bob’s lookalike-but-liberal brother Zack starts polishing up his acting skills for the role of a lifetime.
Douglas Board has perfectly captured the tumultuous feeling of a country in crisis and reveals the inner workings of the British political establishment with humour but scary prescience (hopefully not!).
Those who lean away from Trumpian wham-bam-Twitterfan politics will either enjoy or be horrified by this ‘story’. Probably both! If you enjoy political satire then buy this one. End of.
Electoral meltdown was the dish of the day being served up in the dining rooms of all the older parties, including the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP’s electricity had been stolen by BG and wired up to organisational discipline and youth appeal. What was left resembled a night out in a golf club for time-share salesmen.
– Douglas Board, Time of Lies
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpres...
Book’s great! End of.
Except that much like the traditional politicians I can’t possibly stop with just the soundbite and must instead expound in more detail upon that very simple point. Unlike many politicians, I will be telling the truth!
Time of Lies is a scathing satire on British, and world, politics. Douglas Board effortlessly blends together actions we are seeing unfold right now in Britain, Europe and the USA with historical lessons that we should have learnt (but apparently not) to create a terrifying scenario which feels minutes away from actually becoming a memoir of current events.
Here we see a post-Brexit Britain, riven by in-fighting and abashed by the mockery of other countries turning away from traditional politicians and their machinations to elect a ‘common man’. A man who says it straight. A man who offers simple solutions to complex problems. A man who talks tough and carries knife scars. Bob Grant. Meanwhile the civil service establishment desperately plots to minimise the damage of giving nuclear codes and foreign diplomacy over to the sort of man who hires his cab driver to be Minister for Transport, and Bob’s lookalike-but-liberal brother Zack starts polishing up his acting skills for the role of a lifetime.
Douglas Board has perfectly captured the tumultuous feeling of a country in crisis and reveals the inner workings of the British political establishment with humour but scary prescience (hopefully not!).
Those who lean away from Trumpian wham-bam-Twitterfan politics will either enjoy or be horrified by this ‘story’. Probably both! If you enjoy political satire then buy this one. End of.
Electoral meltdown was the dish of the day being served up in the dining rooms of all the older parties, including the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP’s electricity had been stolen by BG and wired up to organisational discipline and youth appeal. What was left resembled a night out in a golf club for time-share salesmen.
– Douglas Board, Time of Lies
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpres...
February 11, 2019
A political satire of a post-Brexit Britain, with dark humour and a core story about estrangement from your family, kind of? The writing was tight, and well-paced, although the story jumped about a bit too much. The beginning of the story - usually where you establish the characters - was confusing; I didn't realise there were multiple narrators until about a third into the book! You see the perspective of our hero protagonist, our villain protagonist, and our disembodied narrator who watches over other characters. Simple. I thought the book would be funnier - some of the jokes were very wry (like referring to having two Labour parties and two Tory parties with similar but confusing names), and others I did not probably understand as jokes.
Our story is set in the year 2020, about a guy estranged from his brother, who is now prime minister of the UK as leader of a populist pseudo-fascist party (even with a paramilitary youth force a lá the SS). Our protagonist is enlisted by the civil service to impersonate his brother and bring down the new UK government from the top. Divorcing the story from it's post-Brexit birth, you can see the plot developing and pressing onwards, although the author tries his best to get the reader to sympathise with his two protagonists, I find myself not really caring about either, although the ending went some way to softening both of them.
I bought this book on the premise it would be mildly funny satire on Brexit with a decent plot, and I got something close to that - but not quite there. Which is a shame, really.
Our story is set in the year 2020, about a guy estranged from his brother, who is now prime minister of the UK as leader of a populist pseudo-fascist party (even with a paramilitary youth force a lá the SS). Our protagonist is enlisted by the civil service to impersonate his brother and bring down the new UK government from the top. Divorcing the story from it's post-Brexit birth, you can see the plot developing and pressing onwards, although the author tries his best to get the reader to sympathise with his two protagonists, I find myself not really caring about either, although the ending went some way to softening both of them.
I bought this book on the premise it would be mildly funny satire on Brexit with a decent plot, and I got something close to that - but not quite there. Which is a shame, really.
June 4, 2019
The beauty of satire is that you can laugh at it - but then, oh my, sometimes this is too close to being true (and who knows if it isn't?)
Despite a slow start (it is a little confusing given the changing viewpoints which aren't immediately obvious) this gets much pacier in the middle, and infinitely more fun then. Although, it wasn't the ending I hoped for! ;)
Jack and Bob Grant are brothers who are poles apart. Jack is now using his actor name of Zack Parris which helps to distance him from his "Britain's Great - End of!" brother, latterly the new PM.
Set in the very near future, the run-up to the elections sees the "Britain's Great!" rallies (very reminiscent of Trump & Farage) dominate the landscape, and a popular policy is to single out bankers who are blamed for just about everything. Forced to wear a visible "B" on their clothing, and with the CEOs of major banks arrested after yet another recession and a bailout for Britain from the IMF, the story takes events of recent years and spins them, which makes for a fun read.
With his brother now elected as PM, Zack is nigh on apoplectic with confusion, anger and frustration, so when the chance comes to knock Bob from that pedestal, he feels he owes it to the country to grasp the opportunity with both hands.
Further fuelling his anger is the desire to avenge the death of his friend Alan - a banker - and whose death Zack places firmly on the rising intolerance in the country. The opportunity to settle a score is too tempting to refuse.
Masquerading as Bob, after weeks of planning to act just like him, Zack visits the Prince Regent to tender his cabinet's resignation after PM Bob threatens to nuke Europe. (Clever! It makes the case for cloning, don't you think? ;) )
The story is only a hair's breadth away from being true, and while there are elements that could be considered far-fetched, in today's political climate it's abundantly clear that just about anything goes.
For instance: In the book, relations with Europe are pretty dire once Britain has left the EU, (isn't that the truth already?) and France tells Britain the Channel Tunnel will be closed for 24 hours. What France doesn't say is that they are going to let all the refugees and asylum seekers in the Calais camps into the tunnel, and even provide them with all the necessary services - loos, food, water - as they walk through the tunnel to England. Then France seals up the tunnel at their end. This is priceless satire - loved it (but only because it seems too fantastic to be true - then again, who knows? The Brexit shambles isn't exactly going well, is it?)
This is an entertaining read, very much of its moment. If you've taken any interest in the political upheaval currently facing Britain, then reading this book will either make you laugh or cry.
You just have to love satire, especially when it runs so near to the knuckle that you can smell blood.
Despite a slow start (it is a little confusing given the changing viewpoints which aren't immediately obvious) this gets much pacier in the middle, and infinitely more fun then. Although, it wasn't the ending I hoped for! ;)
Jack and Bob Grant are brothers who are poles apart. Jack is now using his actor name of Zack Parris which helps to distance him from his "Britain's Great - End of!" brother, latterly the new PM.
Set in the very near future, the run-up to the elections sees the "Britain's Great!" rallies (very reminiscent of Trump & Farage) dominate the landscape, and a popular policy is to single out bankers who are blamed for just about everything. Forced to wear a visible "B" on their clothing, and with the CEOs of major banks arrested after yet another recession and a bailout for Britain from the IMF, the story takes events of recent years and spins them, which makes for a fun read.
With his brother now elected as PM, Zack is nigh on apoplectic with confusion, anger and frustration, so when the chance comes to knock Bob from that pedestal, he feels he owes it to the country to grasp the opportunity with both hands.
Further fuelling his anger is the desire to avenge the death of his friend Alan - a banker - and whose death Zack places firmly on the rising intolerance in the country. The opportunity to settle a score is too tempting to refuse.
Masquerading as Bob, after weeks of planning to act just like him, Zack visits the Prince Regent to tender his cabinet's resignation after PM Bob threatens to nuke Europe. (Clever! It makes the case for cloning, don't you think? ;) )
The story is only a hair's breadth away from being true, and while there are elements that could be considered far-fetched, in today's political climate it's abundantly clear that just about anything goes.
For instance: In the book, relations with Europe are pretty dire once Britain has left the EU, (isn't that the truth already?) and France tells Britain the Channel Tunnel will be closed for 24 hours. What France doesn't say is that they are going to let all the refugees and asylum seekers in the Calais camps into the tunnel, and even provide them with all the necessary services - loos, food, water - as they walk through the tunnel to England. Then France seals up the tunnel at their end. This is priceless satire - loved it (but only because it seems too fantastic to be true - then again, who knows? The Brexit shambles isn't exactly going well, is it?)
This is an entertaining read, very much of its moment. If you've taken any interest in the political upheaval currently facing Britain, then reading this book will either make you laugh or cry.
You just have to love satire, especially when it runs so near to the knuckle that you can smell blood.
February 14, 2018
I couldn't get into this at all. To start with it confused me, and it seemed contradictory, then I realised there were two different narrators. (This should surely be made clear in headings?) I may not have been knowledgeable enough about politics to fully appreciate the satire, although bits of it were clever, and did make me smile. Ultimately I just found it too hard to get into, and abandoned it on about p60.
May 21, 2024
A post Brexit parody of British politics. The details my be different to what happened 2016-2020 but the type of characters are unfortunately thoroughly believable. Confession - I was given this book as a freebie by the author at a conference. Nevertheless it made me laugh and is worth reading at least once.
October 30, 2017
Interesting but hard to follow
The writing style isn't what I'm used to so I found it rather hard to follow. Perhaps trying to be more clever than it is.
The writing style isn't what I'm used to so I found it rather hard to follow. Perhaps trying to be more clever than it is.
October 18, 2018
I found this a good read. Thought provoking with an interesting twist.
January 25, 2024
Witty, fast paced (although the set up was rather slow). Not sure how it would work for readers unfamiliar with British politics.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews