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The Worst Date Ever: War Crimes, Hollywood Heart-Throbs and Other Abominations
When scriptwriter Jane Bussmann ("South Park, The Fast Show, Brass Eye" and "Smack the Pony") moved to Hollywood, it was supposed to be the start of something better. But a day job interviewing Paris, Britney and Co. left her trapped in the Golden Age of Stupid. Then she saw a photograph of John Prendergast in "Vanity Fair." His day job was ending war. He was also extremely attractive. Jane 'may have inferred she was a Foreign Correspondent', because suddenly she found herself on route to Africa on the trail of this modern-day Indiana Jones. There was one problem: when she got to Uganda John had left. Alone in a war-torn country, appalled by 25,000 child abductions, Jane must investigate the war crime of the century - to make John fancy her. Combining a maverick heroine, an idealist hero, comic disasters and moving tragedy, this is brilliant storytelling by a hugely talented writer. 'Jane Bussmann's romantic odyssey from Hollywood to Uganda is the funniest thing we've "ever" read.' "Instyle" Hot List 'a marvellously maverick approach to the investigation of war crimes.' "Marie Claire" Five Stars 'Imagine "The Last King of Scotland" written by Shazzer from "Bridget Jones's Diary," and you'd still only get halfway to appreciating Jane Bussmann's funny, incongruous and artlessly perceptive account... this is one of the funniest books I've read for a long while' "The Sunday Times"" " " " 'hilarious and heart-wrenching' The "Spectator"
320 pages, Paperback
First published July 3, 2009
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May 7, 2022Humph. The schtick here is that the author is a comedy writer turned celeb interviewer, living a profoundly pointless Hollywood existence of repackaging publicist bullshit. There is a lot of this, with plenty of comic name dropping and self loathing that doesn't ever translate into doing, you know, literally anything else. Also a truly amazing number of "bum sex" references, as if this is peak comedy. Our heroine then becomes stalkily obsessed with an aid worker and ends up going to Uganda pretending to Bea foreign correspondent in order to impress him in a frankly quite gross way.
At this point the book actually starts working. The brittle febrile tone is wildly inappropriate for the horrors and abuses of both Kony and the Ugandan army, but it absolutely conveys the flinching horror she feels. And there is pure genuine rage here at the complicity of government, the worse-than-futile aid that just makes the conflict profitable, the white saviourism of charity workers, the unbelievable callousness towards abused women and children, the indifference of the West. Without the frankly tiresome Sex and the City persona overwhelming everything, the book is compelling.
Then she returns home, can't sell the story as is because nobody cares, and turns it into a comedy show about a shallow celeb journo obsessed with an aid worker ending up in the middle of hell. At which point it becomes impossible to guess how much of the whole thing is performance and marketing to get the story out in the teeth of indifferent celebrity culture.
I don't know. I hated the stalky framing device and the namedropping, "look at me running round Uganda in search of lip plumping gel!" "lol bumsex!" stuff, but she explicitly states that it's the only way she could get publishers, promoters, and an audience for the story of Kony and thousands of kidnapped, raped, abused, mutilated, murdered children. And doesn't that say a bundle.
At this point the book actually starts working. The brittle febrile tone is wildly inappropriate for the horrors and abuses of both Kony and the Ugandan army, but it absolutely conveys the flinching horror she feels. And there is pure genuine rage here at the complicity of government, the worse-than-futile aid that just makes the conflict profitable, the white saviourism of charity workers, the unbelievable callousness towards abused women and children, the indifference of the West. Without the frankly tiresome Sex and the City persona overwhelming everything, the book is compelling.
Then she returns home, can't sell the story as is because nobody cares, and turns it into a comedy show about a shallow celeb journo obsessed with an aid worker ending up in the middle of hell. At which point it becomes impossible to guess how much of the whole thing is performance and marketing to get the story out in the teeth of indifferent celebrity culture.
I don't know. I hated the stalky framing device and the namedropping, "look at me running round Uganda in search of lip plumping gel!" "lol bumsex!" stuff, but she explicitly states that it's the only way she could get publishers, promoters, and an audience for the story of Kony and thousands of kidnapped, raped, abused, mutilated, murdered children. And doesn't that say a bundle.
August 8, 2012
Jane Bussmann has contributed to some of the most challenging comedies of recent times—Chris Morris’s Brass Eye and Jam, along with other seminals The Friday Night Armistice and South Park. So it’s no surprise this book—blandly packaged as a screwball comedy—has the same unflinching bite and relentless bad-taste assault of her other handiworks. What the blurb doesn’t make clear is that this is a screwball comedy about Ugandan atrocities, particularly those by Joseph Kony—a charming lunatic responsible for the kidnap, enslavement, habitual rape, torture and murder of over 20,000 Ugandan girls. Yes, har har. Bussmann’s ‘inciting incident’ (as they say) is a crusade to quit her career as a showbiz hack in LA and her crush on hunky African Affairs director John Prendergast (clearly her attraction to this man is a narrative fabrication) and an attempt to become a Useful Person by reporting on the horrors for a UK broadsheet. The result is a mix of Candide and Mr Bean. An extremely funny, inappropriate, necessary book. Just don’t read it under a depression. Bussmann’s humour lifts no spirits, she only reinforces the pointless, cruel absurdity of existence, and there’s stuff in here so howlingly sick and unfair, you'll no doubt forget you were supposed to be laughing. But Bussmann’s real agenda is merely to get this story out to a wider audience, why not use comedy? The absolute bloodyminded brass of this woman is staggering.
P.S. If you live in the UK and dislike Ugandan torture you might want to pass this petition on to your MP via this portal.
P.S. If you live in the UK and dislike Ugandan torture you might want to pass this petition on to your MP via this portal.
April 5, 2012
I bought this book for next to nothing at a second hand shop so that I could leave it behind while I was travelling but, it was actually quite hard for me to let it go. I enjoyed it so much.
I picked it up because it looked like a good humourous and easy read. And it is just that...even though it's about the war in Uganda. I never would have thought that someone could write an entertaining book about something so serious, but Jane Bussmann has done it.
She doesn't poke fun at the war or the insanity of so much of what is happening there, no one could pull that off, what she makes fun of is herself and her own ignorance and the ludicrisnous of so many other things. She shows us how caught up our society is in things that are completely pointless and useless. While chasing down a totally hot peacemaker across the globe, she transforms from a celebrity gossip writer in L.A into a real life war journalist in Africa. What's really crazy is that this is all based on her real life, it's not fiction!
The best scene has to be when she finally gets her "date" with the hot peacemaker and goes on the hunt for lip plumping serum in Gulu, Uganda. I was actually laughing out loud while reading it.
Love this book!
I picked it up because it looked like a good humourous and easy read. And it is just that...even though it's about the war in Uganda. I never would have thought that someone could write an entertaining book about something so serious, but Jane Bussmann has done it.
She doesn't poke fun at the war or the insanity of so much of what is happening there, no one could pull that off, what she makes fun of is herself and her own ignorance and the ludicrisnous of so many other things. She shows us how caught up our society is in things that are completely pointless and useless. While chasing down a totally hot peacemaker across the globe, she transforms from a celebrity gossip writer in L.A into a real life war journalist in Africa. What's really crazy is that this is all based on her real life, it's not fiction!
The best scene has to be when she finally gets her "date" with the hot peacemaker and goes on the hunt for lip plumping serum in Gulu, Uganda. I was actually laughing out loud while reading it.
Love this book!
August 5, 2014
I decided that since I can't afford to actually travel right now I would give myself the illusion of visiting England by reading the London Times Literary Supplement--which though it's free online turned out to have a (slightly) negative impact on my bank balance. In it I found a review of this memoir, which made me wild to read it, but it won't be out in the US until 2010 meaning no way it's at my local library--I was forced to order it on Amazon UK. The author is a comedian but there is some grim material in here and Bussmann manages the amazing trick of being both tremendously funny and deadly serious at almost the same time.
Bussmann got tired of hanging around Hollywood during 2003-2006, which she calls the Golden Age of Stupid, interviewing (mostly useless) celebrities. She decides to radically change her life by following a peace negotiator (really cute--and very useful) to Uganda so she can write an article about him, but after scraping together the money for a plane ticket he doesn't show up. Not for a month or two anyway--he's now back in Hollywood. Bussmann is left to kill time in a cheap Ugandan hostel, so she decides to try doing some investigative fieldwork while she waits for the chance to interview/date her negotiator. She teaches scriptwriting at an AIDs orphanage, meets numbed victims of the warlord Joseph Kony, and interviews anyone--even very scary people--who might be able to help her figure out why for 20 years the Ugandan army has not been able to prevent Kony from kidnapping children as young as four and forcing them to fight in his militia.
Being a celebrity journalist isn't completely useless preparation for her adventures. Both smug Hollywood stars and menacing army colonels become friendly and helpful after she asks her two work-saving Magic Questions--"You're in amazing shape, what's your secret?" and "We all know what you're famous for, but how does it make you feel when you're not appreciated for your inner talents?"
The peace negotiator eventually shows up, but the interview/date she hoped for doesn't work out the way she planned. The resulting book, however, is a great success. The risks she took, and her mind-blowing accounts of traipsing around Africa kept me reading into the wee hours of the night.
Bussmann got tired of hanging around Hollywood during 2003-2006, which she calls the Golden Age of Stupid, interviewing (mostly useless) celebrities. She decides to radically change her life by following a peace negotiator (really cute--and very useful) to Uganda so she can write an article about him, but after scraping together the money for a plane ticket he doesn't show up. Not for a month or two anyway--he's now back in Hollywood. Bussmann is left to kill time in a cheap Ugandan hostel, so she decides to try doing some investigative fieldwork while she waits for the chance to interview/date her negotiator. She teaches scriptwriting at an AIDs orphanage, meets numbed victims of the warlord Joseph Kony, and interviews anyone--even very scary people--who might be able to help her figure out why for 20 years the Ugandan army has not been able to prevent Kony from kidnapping children as young as four and forcing them to fight in his militia.
Being a celebrity journalist isn't completely useless preparation for her adventures. Both smug Hollywood stars and menacing army colonels become friendly and helpful after she asks her two work-saving Magic Questions--"You're in amazing shape, what's your secret?" and "We all know what you're famous for, but how does it make you feel when you're not appreciated for your inner talents?"
The peace negotiator eventually shows up, but the interview/date she hoped for doesn't work out the way she planned. The resulting book, however, is a great success. The risks she took, and her mind-blowing accounts of traipsing around Africa kept me reading into the wee hours of the night.
February 9, 2017
I LOVED this book, which I realise is an odd thing to say about a book that centres on child soldiers and general war, famine and despair in a sad, plundered African country. However, let me explain:
Jane Bussman may come across as a ditzy, pretend foreign correspondent, but I think it takes mad intelligence to take such serious subject matter and make it funny.
The truth is, that like all of the magazines and papers that turned her article about the Ugandan war down know, people don't want to read about Ugandan war crimes just before they turn in. Bussman's book with it's Hollywood beginning sucks them in and forces them to pay attention. (Even if you look at the blurb and the review quotes on the cover, more attention is given to the "Hollywood" part of the book, than the "African" bit. However, by the time you realise it, you can't put the bloody book down.)
Basically it's a tale about a woman who wants to make it big writing films in Hollywood. She ends up interviewing vapid famous people for publications like Heat magazine and asking them brilliant questions such as, "How do you stay in shape?" (and getting awe-inspiring answers like, "Good genes, I suppose."). Then she meets a good-looking peacemaker with a special interest in African wars, and decides to impress him by flying out to Africa as a foreign correspondent wearing a DKNY safari dress.
Smart, punchy, satirical and thought-provoking are my choice words for this book. If Bussman doesn't make you think about where your hard-earned tax money goes to, and how we're brainwashed by the media and our elected leaders, while simultaneously making you giggle out loud, then I don't know what will.
Jane Bussman may come across as a ditzy, pretend foreign correspondent, but I think it takes mad intelligence to take such serious subject matter and make it funny.
The truth is, that like all of the magazines and papers that turned her article about the Ugandan war down know, people don't want to read about Ugandan war crimes just before they turn in. Bussman's book with it's Hollywood beginning sucks them in and forces them to pay attention. (Even if you look at the blurb and the review quotes on the cover, more attention is given to the "Hollywood" part of the book, than the "African" bit. However, by the time you realise it, you can't put the bloody book down.)
Basically it's a tale about a woman who wants to make it big writing films in Hollywood. She ends up interviewing vapid famous people for publications like Heat magazine and asking them brilliant questions such as, "How do you stay in shape?" (and getting awe-inspiring answers like, "Good genes, I suppose."). Then she meets a good-looking peacemaker with a special interest in African wars, and decides to impress him by flying out to Africa as a foreign correspondent wearing a DKNY safari dress.
Smart, punchy, satirical and thought-provoking are my choice words for this book. If Bussman doesn't make you think about where your hard-earned tax money goes to, and how we're brainwashed by the media and our elected leaders, while simultaneously making you giggle out loud, then I don't know what will.
April 22, 2012
Unexpectedly really good. Blew through it pretty quickly. Had to slog through the first couple chapters about her work in LA in celebrity journalism where you just want to shoot the author to put her out of her misery (and yours). But it takes a turn and all of a sudden she's dropped into Uganda researching the horrible brutalities occurring there. And somehow manages to do it without losing the dry sarcastic sense of humor she had been applying to the ridiculous celebrity scene. Entertaining and as someone equally (and embarrassingly) clueless about some of the current(ish) affairs in Uganda, it was an unexpected learning experience as well. Ignore the cover design though. Awful.
January 1, 2019
It took me a long time to read this. I kept picking it up and reading a little and then not being able to go back to it. I think in part it's because of the contrast between her self-deprecating, first-world-problems humor and the horrible, awful, absurd situation in Uganda.
There are some things to like here, though. How she goes from dissatisfied and shallow to aware of the massive, circular problems at the root of the whole Kony mess. If people are making money from a war, why would they end it? This means a government getting aid, individuals in that government and around it enriching themselves, and aid-workers making a name for themselves. She shows the whole complicated jumble: government officials and spies who lie, journalists who get intimidated, an aid community committed to doing good but often out of touch or unwilling to adapt, people trying to survive as best they can under ridiculous rules: go to the refugee camps so the soldiers can protect you, oh wait: the soldiers have better things to do, so they won't protect you, but you still have to leave your home and it's not optional. Oh, wait: the war's over and we won, so there's no problem. But you still have to stay in the camps.
She pokes continuous fun at her own shallowness and cluelessness--it gets in the way of the story some times. But her comedic voice is well-suited to the ridiculousness of the story. She points out the absurdities very well. And it's interesting to watch her collect details and find contacts and muddle through on the story and its key players.
There are some things to like here, though. How she goes from dissatisfied and shallow to aware of the massive, circular problems at the root of the whole Kony mess. If people are making money from a war, why would they end it? This means a government getting aid, individuals in that government and around it enriching themselves, and aid-workers making a name for themselves. She shows the whole complicated jumble: government officials and spies who lie, journalists who get intimidated, an aid community committed to doing good but often out of touch or unwilling to adapt, people trying to survive as best they can under ridiculous rules: go to the refugee camps so the soldiers can protect you, oh wait: the soldiers have better things to do, so they won't protect you, but you still have to leave your home and it's not optional. Oh, wait: the war's over and we won, so there's no problem. But you still have to stay in the camps.
She pokes continuous fun at her own shallowness and cluelessness--it gets in the way of the story some times. But her comedic voice is well-suited to the ridiculousness of the story. She points out the absurdities very well. And it's interesting to watch her collect details and find contacts and muddle through on the story and its key players.
January 13, 2011
I purchased this book because Michella Wrong endorses it emphatically and because she is a lioness and a scholar with an incredible talent for writing about Africa. I had my doubts during the first seventy pages, wherein the humor has a fast looming expiration date because of how time-bound and referential it is. Suspecting that Bussmann would not have insider status in Uganda made it hard to believe that she could get the same traction with her jokes in a foreign context. Plus, it isn't easy to make the transition from massive stationary targets like Paris Hilton and Hollywood agents to the relatively unhilarious reality of abused Ugandan children and their sociopathic predators. My doubts, however, were never too serious because her most consistent target, in one of the world's better comic traditions, is herself. Bussmann, also quickly demonstrates that she has the tenacity and social intelligence to gain access in stressful East African circumstances, which frees her from having to take digs at herself for the whole book.
Arriving in Africa for the first time with a tendency to self-deprecate paves the way for a worthwhile book, while arriving in Africa with a tendency to deprecate one's surroundings paves the way to infuriating trash (c.p. Jeffrey Tayler). Bussmann is refreshingly unoffensive in her posture towards Africa, which means that it is easy to recommend her without a bunch of caveats.
I usually feel unkind recommending my favorite books about Africa (or novels from Africa) to my friends and family members who haven't lived in any of its countries. "The Worst Date Ever" is the only true exception. I could recommend this to a total one state redneck without worrying that he would develop any new unsavory prejudices (and without worrying that he would never finish it). Bussmann targets the people who deserve it and humanizes the people who don't, all while engaging her readers with the interwove sub-plot of her exaggerated crush on a notable globe-trotting humanitarian. This courtship cum desire to earn development cred was an extremely effective hook and kept her from seeming self-righteous or shmarmy.
While I will not delve back into Bussmann's previous comic writings, I will look forward to anything else that she writes while traveling in difficult contexts. Save this book for a long airplane ride, for a time when you are sick or for whenever you need a good dose of someone else's good energy.
Arriving in Africa for the first time with a tendency to self-deprecate paves the way for a worthwhile book, while arriving in Africa with a tendency to deprecate one's surroundings paves the way to infuriating trash (c.p. Jeffrey Tayler). Bussmann is refreshingly unoffensive in her posture towards Africa, which means that it is easy to recommend her without a bunch of caveats.
I usually feel unkind recommending my favorite books about Africa (or novels from Africa) to my friends and family members who haven't lived in any of its countries. "The Worst Date Ever" is the only true exception. I could recommend this to a total one state redneck without worrying that he would develop any new unsavory prejudices (and without worrying that he would never finish it). Bussmann targets the people who deserve it and humanizes the people who don't, all while engaging her readers with the interwove sub-plot of her exaggerated crush on a notable globe-trotting humanitarian. This courtship cum desire to earn development cred was an extremely effective hook and kept her from seeming self-righteous or shmarmy.
While I will not delve back into Bussmann's previous comic writings, I will look forward to anything else that she writes while traveling in difficult contexts. Save this book for a long airplane ride, for a time when you are sick or for whenever you need a good dose of someone else's good energy.
November 21, 2022
Hilarious yet straight to the point, vivid description about Uganda and the happenings that are affecting millions of children. Recommended!
September 10, 2018
I enjoyed this, and it came at a good time because I had just finished some heavy reading and needed something lighter and easier to get through. It went so quickly, I apparently forgot to record it at all. Which is both its blessing and its curse.
It was a good read, but I wish it had spent less time lusting (even in self-deprecating just) after a humanitarian and more time learning about the area and conveying some sense of the genuine emotional experience of the author. I know it's not easy to create comedy as well as emotional honesty, as comedy is often predicated on hiding hard emotions. Still, this left me with some very jarring reading moments, because the war horrors and how people are forced to live with continual threat and atrocity gets mixed in with flirtation and drinking and other fluff about her own shenanigans and it made me irritable with her own callowness at many points. I think that was intended, but it also doesn't resolve in any particular direction. She doesn't learn anything or grow up so much as she runs out of money and time, and the book runs out of pages.
It was a good read, but I wish it had spent less time lusting (even in self-deprecating just) after a humanitarian and more time learning about the area and conveying some sense of the genuine emotional experience of the author. I know it's not easy to create comedy as well as emotional honesty, as comedy is often predicated on hiding hard emotions. Still, this left me with some very jarring reading moments, because the war horrors and how people are forced to live with continual threat and atrocity gets mixed in with flirtation and drinking and other fluff about her own shenanigans and it made me irritable with her own callowness at many points. I think that was intended, but it also doesn't resolve in any particular direction. She doesn't learn anything or grow up so much as she runs out of money and time, and the book runs out of pages.
May 1, 2013
Disappointing, after a strong recommendation from a bookseller friend. The subject(s) are interesting (self-discovery, career struggle) and compelling (child armies and government corruption in Uganda conveniently ignored by Western powers), but the writer's voice fails to cohere into a stable, trustworthy entity. It's a hard assignment, to bring authority (however variously this could be achieved; certainly it doesn't need to be Morrovian or Cronkite-like) to the Uganda sections and the writer is just not up to it. For that matter, though, the L.A. sections don't much satisfy either. It could be a case of American-not-latching-on-to-British-humor, but for me (no great lover of L.A. or celebrity culture) these felt like one long cascade of snark and easy shots lightly garlanded with faux self-deprecation that was really patting itself on the back. I'm now scuttling back to lit-fic for a while for some much-needed nutrients.
June 6, 2015
Yeah, this book was pretty terrible. I think that I missed a lot of the jokes since I'm not British, but also I was generally offended by the attempts to use comedy in places where I just didn't think comedy belonged at all. Also, Bussmann knows nothing about the world of aid, but critiques it in a way that will just encourage more and more people to support decreasing aid budgets. So not only is it funny, it is also damaging. Finally, everything before page 200 was the worst. Not smart or funny in the least.
On the positive side, I haven't been reading much lately and this book got me reading again. Also, the last bit where she was trying to sell a screenplay of the story was pretty funny. Also, her stomach problems made me laugh out loud. Still, none of this justifies the awfulness of the rest.
On the positive side, I haven't been reading much lately and this book got me reading again. Also, the last bit where she was trying to sell a screenplay of the story was pretty funny. Also, her stomach problems made me laugh out loud. Still, none of this justifies the awfulness of the rest.
August 3, 2013
This book is utterly utterly inappropriate and that's what makes it brilliant. Sarcastic, obnoxious, and obscenely funny (where 'obscenely' means both 'very' and 'rude'), Bussmann's story is one of brutal honesty, both about herself and about her experiences in the totally different worlds of Hollywood idiocy and Ugandan civil war horror. She manages to inform while sticking to the golden rule of decent comedy - she only mocks those more powerful than herself, or those in on her jokes (there is a beautiful ongoing joke theme about her relationship with her, seemingly arsey, sister which you just know the sister is in on).
It's informative, scary, rage-inducing and dark, but also very very human.
It's informative, scary, rage-inducing and dark, but also very very human.
January 25, 2011
This book is insanely educational. It teaches you everything there is to know about the war in Uganda, but is hilarious the entire way through. It is an incredible mirror to western cultures and reminds us how vital it is to remember the world around us. This is such a clever book and Bussmann is genius in using entertainment to bring awareness to one of the most terrifying tragedies occuring in the world today.
April 23, 2013
This is a genuinely funny book about war crimes, corruption and the failure of international aid/politics — which is odd.
Perhaps there are times when the jokes start to get in the way of the book's more serious purpose, or the combination feels a bit weird; but honestly, not as much as you might think.
Perhaps there are times when the jokes start to get in the way of the book's more serious purpose, or the combination feels a bit weird; but honestly, not as much as you might think.
April 3, 2015
I was aware of this book for years but it was only available from the UK--it must have an odd printing/publishing story because now there seem to be hundreds of copies available from remainder houses in the US.
Five stars because Jane Bussmann is cynical and self-deprecating with a terrific eye for the telling detail. And funny as hell. She is a talented storyteller and has a lot to tell.
Five stars because Jane Bussmann is cynical and self-deprecating with a terrific eye for the telling detail. And funny as hell. She is a talented storyteller and has a lot to tell.
May 1, 2013
It started off ok but some things you can't make a joke of and were in poor taste...
April 25, 2013
The beginning is really overly crude but I like this book so much, I've bought a replacement copy as a friend moved away and never returned the one I'd loaned her.
December 1, 2019
This is an excellent companion piece to "We Did Nothing" by Linda Polman. The big difference being that whereas Linda Polman was and remains a hard-nosed foreign correspondent, Jane Bussman decided to go to Uganda to basically traipse about after an incredibly effective negotiator with the ear of the UN (who also happens to be rather charismatic apparently world-saving and attractive).
What Bussman does, very cleverly, is assumes you know bugger all about Uganda, and let's herself be You: the western noob who only recognises how out of place and crass they are when they are slap bang *in the middle* of the compromised horror of the situation.
As a woman reading, her purposeful self deprecation raises my eyebrows a lot - surely she can't be this naive? But maybe she is. Either way, the whole adventure is very, very funny, until it just isn't. In this she shares a lot of ground with Polman, using humour to familiarise yourself with the unforgivable, the appalling, then hitting you between the eyes when you're comfortable.
How on earth it took me so long to read this I have no idea, it's been out about 5 years but it is really, really good and why it hasn't been dramatised as yet I have no idea. It's certainly a hell of alot better as a naive fish out of water book that anything by that arse Toby Young.
Buy it new, so Jane gets your $.
What Bussman does, very cleverly, is assumes you know bugger all about Uganda, and let's herself be You: the western noob who only recognises how out of place and crass they are when they are slap bang *in the middle* of the compromised horror of the situation.
As a woman reading, her purposeful self deprecation raises my eyebrows a lot - surely she can't be this naive? But maybe she is. Either way, the whole adventure is very, very funny, until it just isn't. In this she shares a lot of ground with Polman, using humour to familiarise yourself with the unforgivable, the appalling, then hitting you between the eyes when you're comfortable.
How on earth it took me so long to read this I have no idea, it's been out about 5 years but it is really, really good and why it hasn't been dramatised as yet I have no idea. It's certainly a hell of alot better as a naive fish out of water book that anything by that arse Toby Young.
Buy it new, so Jane gets your $.
March 20, 2021
I admit it, I didn't finish this, so perhaps my star rating is unfair. It was just too exhausting.
I find that's a common problem with TV comedy writers who decide to write books: they've been trained to produce a relentless string of smart observations and deadly one-liners, so that's what they do, even in a novel. They forget that on TV, you've got visuals of the characters and the setting, you've got tone of voice, you've got body language. A novelist has to word-paint those things and if they don't, you've got nothing but a bunch of one-liners. And no matter how good they are, if they're just dumped on the page, disembodied, they soon stop being funny.
Perhaps that aspect of the novel improved when the action got to Africa, but I'm not going to find out. Based on the reviews, the African section sounds depressing with an unsatisfactory ending, so I think I will give it a miss.
I find that's a common problem with TV comedy writers who decide to write books: they've been trained to produce a relentless string of smart observations and deadly one-liners, so that's what they do, even in a novel. They forget that on TV, you've got visuals of the characters and the setting, you've got tone of voice, you've got body language. A novelist has to word-paint those things and if they don't, you've got nothing but a bunch of one-liners. And no matter how good they are, if they're just dumped on the page, disembodied, they soon stop being funny.
Perhaps that aspect of the novel improved when the action got to Africa, but I'm not going to find out. Based on the reviews, the African section sounds depressing with an unsatisfactory ending, so I think I will give it a miss.
July 18, 2017
Very interesting writing style. This is first book of this genre I have read. Its kind of like journalism+biography+comedy.
You learn a few things about the war in Uganda and how sometimes good intentions lead to bad results.
Recommend reading it, just because it is very different from the other books that you might read.
You learn a few things about the war in Uganda and how sometimes good intentions lead to bad results.
Recommend reading it, just because it is very different from the other books that you might read.
January 12, 2024
The second half of the book got much better, however the writing style felt jumpy and hard to follow. Every thought had a one liner joke following it; she’s obviously very smart and funny but I couldn’t always connect the meanings. I couldn’t follow all the celebrity names or jokes. It’s definitely a unique style, maybe too many thoughts in each paragraph for a simple reader like me.
April 12, 2021
Aardig boek over een Britse showbiz journalist in Hollywood die over een oorlog in Uganda gaat schrijven. Mét een dosis humor, die bij mij niet echt binnenkomt. Ook verhaaltechnisch ben ik soms de draad een beetje kwijt. Krappe 3*
September 7, 2017
Very funny and informative about Africa and stuff.
June 27, 2020
Thoroughly enjoyable book. Despite the sombre subject she still managed to make me laugh out loud a good number of times. Recommended
Read
December 3, 2021This appears to be her recent book under another title. I'm not sure what the story is.
February 9, 2024
A bit too Bridget Jones for me. It took a while to get into, but did get more interesting. Well-written.
January 10, 2025
DNF
I couldn’t finish it, I don’t know if it was the writing style, the font or my brain but I got as far as chapter 13 and then gave up.
I couldn’t finish it, I don’t know if it was the writing style, the font or my brain but I got as far as chapter 13 and then gave up.
July 26, 2024
A very strange mix but she really commits to the bit. It feels extremely nineties, not always in a good way, but I have never read anything like it.
January 13, 2010
I have mixed feeling about Jane Bussmann's book. It is, by turns, incredibly moving and amazingly funny - and does a remarkable job of shifting from hilariously narrating the Hollywood life of a gossip columnist, to a harrowing and terrifying vision of life in civil-war torn Uganda.
But this is really one of the problems with the book; the cover and the light-hearted opening don't give a fair indication of the sad tale of horrifying poverty and the kidnap and rape of Ugandan children that the story turns into. Bussmann does a very good job of describing how she unwittingly becomes a foreign war correspondent, in the course of trying to meet John Prendergast, an attractive human rights activist that she seems to have become mildly obsessed with.
However, the reader is left wondering how much of the book is fiction, and how much is real - names and locations have, of course, been changed to protect the identities of those featured. Jane even admits toward the end that her obsession with Prendergast was never all that - though towards the front of the book, she's mooning over him like a lovesick puppy.
Bussmann clearly goes on an emotional journey - despite clearly being an experienced traveller, she does change from being astonishingly selfish (witness the early pages of the book where she desperately phones round newspapers and magazines to sponsor her trip to Uganda to meet John, secures funding to volunteer as a teacher in a school, before quitting the school after a matter of days) to genuinely striving to help the lives of the people that she's met.
I was left feeling that the book didn't entirely work - although it's a fascinating, and eye-opening, read about some current events in the world that I really didn't know anything about - it didn't read like a coherent whole somehow. Bussmann complains about a lot of things; the British governments' funding of lazy and ineffective Government forces in Uganda (using the taxes raised from underwear sales, seemingly), the ineffective distribution of charitable donations, the horrific actions of the rebel forces in Uganda, and so on, but we're left with a depressing feeling of hopelessness that despite Bussman's efforts, she wasn't able to bring any of these issues to a wider audience.
I think the reason I find this so depressing is that despite her repeated claims of hopelessness, Bussmann is anything but - she travels halfway round the world to a country that even the most inveterate travel would baulk at, and undertakes journeys and undergoes experiences that few would choose to endure. I would love to meet her - she seems tremendous fun, has an utterly terrific sense of humour and is wonderfully self-depricating. Overwhelmingly, it is Bussmann's likability (despite her skipping out of the school she was supposed to be teaching in) that keeps the book entertaining.
But this is really one of the problems with the book; the cover and the light-hearted opening don't give a fair indication of the sad tale of horrifying poverty and the kidnap and rape of Ugandan children that the story turns into. Bussmann does a very good job of describing how she unwittingly becomes a foreign war correspondent, in the course of trying to meet John Prendergast, an attractive human rights activist that she seems to have become mildly obsessed with.
However, the reader is left wondering how much of the book is fiction, and how much is real - names and locations have, of course, been changed to protect the identities of those featured. Jane even admits toward the end that her obsession with Prendergast was never all that - though towards the front of the book, she's mooning over him like a lovesick puppy.
Bussmann clearly goes on an emotional journey - despite clearly being an experienced traveller, she does change from being astonishingly selfish (witness the early pages of the book where she desperately phones round newspapers and magazines to sponsor her trip to Uganda to meet John, secures funding to volunteer as a teacher in a school, before quitting the school after a matter of days) to genuinely striving to help the lives of the people that she's met.
I was left feeling that the book didn't entirely work - although it's a fascinating, and eye-opening, read about some current events in the world that I really didn't know anything about - it didn't read like a coherent whole somehow. Bussmann complains about a lot of things; the British governments' funding of lazy and ineffective Government forces in Uganda (using the taxes raised from underwear sales, seemingly), the ineffective distribution of charitable donations, the horrific actions of the rebel forces in Uganda, and so on, but we're left with a depressing feeling of hopelessness that despite Bussman's efforts, she wasn't able to bring any of these issues to a wider audience.
I think the reason I find this so depressing is that despite her repeated claims of hopelessness, Bussmann is anything but - she travels halfway round the world to a country that even the most inveterate travel would baulk at, and undertakes journeys and undergoes experiences that few would choose to endure. I would love to meet her - she seems tremendous fun, has an utterly terrific sense of humour and is wonderfully self-depricating. Overwhelmingly, it is Bussmann's likability (despite her skipping out of the school she was supposed to be teaching in) that keeps the book entertaining.
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