In his most recent novel ‘Blind Faith’, Ben Elton paints a world where somebody who does not has the urge to show every single bit of their lives, including their ‘hopefully regular’ sex life, is considered a dangerous perve. Why would anybody want to have secrets anyway, right?

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Trafford is not as most people. He likes to keep things to himself. And that is something unconcei-vable in a world where everybody knows everything about everybody, but where ignorance is bliss. Global warming is a poor excuse for the flood that is so clearly a punishment to the people who thought to outsmart the Love with dangerous, dark believes in science. With media being omnipresent, silence is unheard of and wanting privacy is considered a perversion. Trafford works, as most people, for NatDat, the National Databank, that registers everything on everybody and the relation between every single piece of information. In his quest for ‘something more’ he meets people who think alike, learning about reason, literature, science and vaccination. He wants to make people think and even find people who want to do it with him. Or doesn’t he?

Indeed, Ben Elton, shows once more he knows how to criticise and make fun of contemporary entertainment and human relations. After ‘Dead Famous’ and ‘Chart Throb’, critics on respectively Big Brother and Idol, he comes with what looks like an update to George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. Having read the latter, not much comes as a surprise, really. On the other hand, as we so eagerly make our lives public nowadays, it is ‘fun’ to reflect on our Facebook and Twitter frenzy. But it is also shocking to realize it is not difficult to see us going there. If you know something about Scientology, the comparison between that and The Temple is not hard to be made either.

If humorous criticism on modern society is something for you, Elton’s above-mentioned novels are all highly recommended. ‘Blind Faith’ might disappoint after ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ though. |