Blast from the Past

Set in the staid, politically-correct nineties of New Labour Britain, the story flashes back with comic effect to the early eighties, a time of protest, strikes and Cold War. While hardcore Elton fans might be disappointed with the weak plot and smaller helpings of piercing wit and wacky socio-political observations, Blast from the Past still offers up some laugh-out-loud lines and entertaining reading. --Andrew Crawford

Reader Reviews:

A waste of time and money - let alone ink and paper! (0/0 people found this helpful)

Before reading this book, all my exposure to Ben Elton was in the form of 'Blackadder' and 'The Thin Blue Line' and as such i was expecting Elton's novels to be approaching the same quality. How wrong I was.

On screen Elton's words are hilarious, on paper he seems incapable of humour. He makes occasional attempts but they just aren't funny. The plot is meaningless and the characters are dull. The book is incredibly slow with pointless flashbacks giving fragmented images of uneventful lives.

The inevitable twist in the tail is obscenely unrealistic yet at the same time totally predictable, and although the pace quickens in the last 15 pages it does not justify the other 250 in which the storyline stagnates through a couple of mundane, uneventful hours.

Elton writes the political debates that the two main characters share as if they were well prepared speeches rather than heated and impassioned expressions of their principles. The dialogue is far too eloquent to pull off the spontaneity of argument and it seems almost as if Elton is merely showing off his literary ability. These debates are incredibly repetitive. The contradiction of the two characters political stance is a major theme and these conflicts of principal quickly become wearisome as they never develop the plot further.

In what appears to be a desperate effort to flesh out the book Elton creates a stalker character called Peter who plays a very small part in the plot and who's existence in the story seems somewhat pointless. With the characterisation of Peter, Elton once again seems to be parading his limited abilities.

'Blast from the Past' is supposed to be a 'maturation' of Elton as a novelist - a step beyond his agenda-based previous work into a more open minded genre. What is created is not interesting either as a story nor as an exploration of opposing political viewpoints.

Entertaining (0/0 people found this helpful)

Blast From the Past takes a break from the more politically-motivated novels written by Ben Elton. In High Society and Stark for instance, his characters tended to be soap-boxes from which Mr. Elton could pound out his views on drug legalisation, and the damage caused by humans upon the planet, respectively. As a result, they can spontaneously become impossibly erudite, witty and educated when their creator shifts gear into full flow, and this detracts from their credibility. People simply aren't as eloquent in everyday life as an intelligent writer with all the time in the world to hone an excerpt of dialogue to perfection.

I got the feeling when reading Blast that it was written by a far more wordly-wise author than the one that sat down to write Stark. Yes, there's a lot of politics (ladies and gentlemen) to be had in Blast, but here it's what driving the characters, rather than the novel itself. Jack is an American, massively successful, but hopelessly lovelorn, multi-star general. He pays an unexpected visit to old flame and the source of his torment Polly, during a work-inspired trip to Britain. Polly, his girlfriend of some sixteen years hence, is Jack's polar opposite in almost every way. It's when the two come together that Mr. Elton exposes his insights into the ludicrousness of extremely dogmatic, opinionated politics in his usual sharp and witty way. Perhaps, in a sense, this is his means of poking fun at his own tendancy towards single-mindedness earlier in his career. There are also some clever observations of Britishness as seen through American eyes and vice-versa.

I liked this book. Although it lacks the fire of Elton in full 'a-man-with-a-message' mode, it was a relief not to be bludgeoned with a political adgenda whilst trying to enjoy a novel.

Average: too long winded, not a lot happens (1/1 people found this helpful)

Following Stark, Gridlock, This Other Eden and Popcorn, Blast From The Past is Ben Elton's fifth novel. It's his worst.

It tells the story of a Polly - a principled 17 year old feminist leftwing peacenik who hates nuclear weapons and campaigns outside Greenham Common in the 1980s - and Jack, a high ranking rightwing US soldier in his 30s. They meet, bizarrely fall in love but then after a summer of love Jack leaves her. Suspense is provided by the 'Bug', a man obsessed by Polly who watches her and is determined to possess her no matter what. The novel charts his obsession as a sideline to Polly and Jack's relationship, his departure and his subsequent surprise arrival on her doorstep 16 years after he left her.

I'm reading Ben Elton's novels in the order they were published and this is his worst to date - why?

It is written adequately enough but the problem is that it is just not funny enough for a comic novel, nor is it gripping enough for a suspense novel. Yes it does have jokes but nowhere near as many as Stark or Gridlock - whole chapters fly by between them - and in a comic novel a joke every 10 to 15 pages is not enough. Moreover, the suspense formed by the Bug wanting Polly only takes off in the last 75 pages of the novel, and this is a BIG problem.

This story would work well as a short story because endless conversations between two people about the same subject ('Why have you returned, Jack?') cannot be sustained over 350 pages. There are only three main characters yet Ben Elton is still afflicted with his problem of excessive wording and poor editing, and whereas Stark is funny but overly long (with huge sections of samey samey leftwing sentiments), Blast From The Past is overly long with fewer jokes and far too much dialogue.

Most of these chapters are conversations going over the same ground, and it would have been far more effective (and less tedious for the reader) had this been accomplished in fewer chapters.

The narrator viewpoint switches at whim from Polly to Jack and back again, so we are never clear who we are supposed to be sympathetic for (if any). To compound matters, instead of showing us how the characters feel through dialogue and body language, we are constantly TOLD what they feel, which is both clumsy and annoying.

It's a shame because Ben Elton can write better suspense (Popcorn) and can also write funnier jokes (Stark). Stick with these and avoid Blast From The Past.

Disappointing (1/1 people found this helpful)

I loved Dead Famous and Chart Throb, so I picked up Blast From the Past at the library and expected a good read.

This book was so bad it has put me off attempting to read any of Elton's other novels. Sure, it was an easy read, but it had some big problems. Firstly the comedy. This book could not decide if it wanted to be serious or funny. As a result it was too flippant to be taken seriously, but too serious to make me laugh.

Then there were the characters. A full cast of boring stereotypes. Hey, Jack is SO RIGHT WING and Polly is SO LEFT and they're in love isn't that funny? Yeah, we get it. Most of the book is devoted to telling their uninteresting life stories. Both of them were painted as unpleasant, immoral hypocrites. Try as I might, I found myself completely unable to care about them. I kept expecting an exciting twist that would make me at least a little sympathetic to one of them, but it never came.

Also, Elton likes to write about the physical side of their relationship. I have no problem with that, but some parts of this book read like trashy porn, and it lends nothing to the plot. If the characters aren't having sex, they're planning on having sex or putting their clothes back on having just had it.

However, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading long, boring, pointless political diatribes. I skimmed most of these parts (and ended up skipping about 1/3 of the book my doing so), because it's nothing we haven't heard before, and served no purpose beyond reminding the reader that Jack is REALLY RIGHT WING and Polly is REALLY LEFT.

Superb (6/7 people found this helpful)

Popcorn saw Ben Elton move away from rambling, multi-stranded novels, instead placing a few characters in a single location and a tight timeframe - with flashbacks fleshing out the characters and providing comic relief.
Blast from the Past has a similar structure, and it's Elton's best novel to date. The premise is superb, and the characters well drawn (especially the persuasively creepy stalker); the comedy sequences are laugh-out-loud funny, and the thriller elements genuinely exciting.

Blast from the Past

Ben Elton

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