ALL MY COLOURS BY DAVID QUANTICK - BOOK REVIEW

Writers are a funny bunch; they spend their lives pouring their blood sweat tears and heart onto the page.  They give us an insight into their most private and personal thoughts, creating works that expose them to the criticism and microscopic intrusion that life in the modern world brings, I don't know how they do it. 

99.99% of the time they are a beautiful bunch of people, but we all know that one arrogant, know it all, the writer who thinks editors dilute their creativity, readers who don't get their masterpiece, and my work is a work of genius and deserves to be read by everybody type.  In my experience, they tend to be big white males, full of fake buff and bluster, depressed that their writing career has gone the way of their hair and drained out down some dirty plughole in their lonely bedsit.  

Todd Milstead is one such writer, is the dictionary had pictures in it,  arrogant would have been replaced by a picture of him.  Even before the main thrust of All My Colours  by David Quantick begins, he is already on a downward spiral chasing that literary great white whale of the Great American Novel.  With a wastebasket in his author's den filled with thousands of drafts of the first page of next great literary novel, and a marriage that is circling the metaphoric plug hole of his life in general.  But things are about to get even worse for Todd, little does he know that his rant a dinner party will set him on a quest to find a book that only he seems to remember that will take him to the pure dark heart of the great American novel.  

David Quantic is a quintessentially English writer, best known for his work on some the UK's finest comedies, he brings his trademark sense of wry, self-referential comedy to this dark and hilarious novel.  You have to wonder if his experiences of being a writer on the American comedy show Veep served as an inspiration for the plight of Todd Milstead, there is undoubtedly a degree of the fish out of the water, and I don't quite belong here to his narrative.  One hopes that he is based solely on the themes and not on how David acted during his time in Hollywood. 

Mixing biting  Delvish satire with a brooding Lovecraftian sense of foreboding, Quantick has created a novel that looks deeply into the destructive nature of artistic creation.  There is a refreshing honesty to this novel, OK Milstead goes through and does some pretty nasty stuff, but look beyond that, and you will witness Quantick bearing his soul on the page.  This is, above all a brutal warts and all look at how creative types can run the risk of losing everything to see the creations born out into the world.  

Quantick keeps the story flowing fast, with his assured use of dialogue rather than long descriptive passages to move the narrative forward, which is not surprising considering his background in script writing.  Balance the absurd, and nasty with a razor sharp wit Quantick has written a book that can be read and enjoyed by a wide fanbase.  There are enough horror and cosmic shenanigans to please the horror crowd, and there are enough humour and reflective analysis to appeal to the broader audience.  

All My Colours is also one of those books that a lot of people have a hard time identifying with, due to the lack of characters that you can root for.  Don't come into this book expecting Milstead and the other residents to be your cliched middle American polo shirt, chino wearing square-jawed protagonist, that every man secretly wants to be and who can turn women weak at the knee with just a wink of their sapphire blue eyes.  No these are a bunch of despicable reprobates,  photorealistic caricatures of everything that is wrong with the fame side of the creative world.   There is nobody to root for, but you will be rooting and tooting with laughter as you read this book.  

All My Colours is the perfect companion to TV's Black Mirror, and may just give you an insight into why authors and creatives can be a bit messed up in the head 

ALL MY COLOURS BY DAVID QUANTICK 

From Emmy-award winning author David Quantick, All My Colors is a darkly comic novel about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences. A bizarre, mind-bending story at the intersection of Richard Bachman, Charlie Kaufman and Franz Kafka.
It is March 1979 in DeKalb Illinois. Todd Milstead is a wannabe writer, a serial adulterer, and a jerk, only tolerated by his friends because he throws the best parties with the best booze. During one particular party, Todd is showing off his perfect recall, quoting poetry and literature word for word plucked from his eidetic memory. When he begins quoting from a book no one else seems to know, a novel called All My Colors, Todd is incredulous. He can quote it from cover to cover and yet it doesn’t seem to exist.
With a looming divorce and mounting financial worries, Todd finally tries to write a novel, with the vague idea of making money from his talent. The only problem is he can’t write. But the book – All My Colors – is there in his head. Todd makes a decision: he will “write” this book that nobody but him can remember. After all, if nobody’s heard of it, how can he get into trouble?
As the dire consequences of his actions come home to both Todd and his long-suffering friends, it becomes clear that there is a high – and painful – price to pay for his crime.

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