Thoughts at the half way point of Holiday in a Coma

Having waded through Gide, which has a very pre-war turn of the last century feel about it, the reading choice has switched to something a lot more contemporary. Holiday in a Coma by Federic Beigbeder is as far away from Gide's world of meetings over tea in the drawing room as you could get. But the sense of fraud, facades and failed love that pervades The Counterfeiters is just as evident here.

The first novel in this two-book volume, follows Marc Marronier, a rich, trendy and well connected advertising executive who has been invited to the opening of the must-go-to openning of a new nightclub in Paris. His old friend is behind the opening of Shit and so he heads off to renew that relationship and to rub shoulders with the glitterati.

The book runs at 100 miles an hour with the images, verbal assuaslts launched by Marc and his friends all speeding up as the music and the drugs kick in. But rather than feel blinded by the names and superstar status of those around him Marc instead becomes morose and starts to amuse himself in ways that alienate him even further from those around him.

Good stuff and looking forward to the ending...