Book of the Week

Meltdown isn't the best Ben Elton novel I ever read but it is far from the worst though I will admit that once I caught on the fact that the title referred to a financial meltdown and not the ecological disasters which are usually Elton's favorite topic, I was afraid it was going to be a lot more predictable than it was. In the end, I actually found it intriguing and hard to put down. However, it does go in for a lot of restating the obvious: materialism is bad, making more money than you can adequately deal with is wrong, not saving money is bad, making a profit out of financial disaster is evil.

I must confess that I started rolling my eyes during the last few chapters when Elton stopped mocking the excesses of the very, very rich and started moralizing on the virtuousness of poor people, in effect preaching a sermon which unfortunately says more about Elton's lack of experience with real-life poor people than anything else. It is not that I do not appreciate such a sentiment but in my experience, poor people tend to be just as complicated in their morality as rich people. Not every rich person I have met was a heartless bastard -- though I have met quite a few who were hardly a credit to their class -- and not every poor person I have met qualified for a halo.

I would like to think there is as much wisdom in my late father's description of poverty as hell as there is in Elton's notion that losing one's money makes one more virtuous. Sometimes it does but not always and anyway, it is hardly a theory any decent person wants to test.

Anyway, regardless of my philosophical differences with the author, Meltdown is still a good book.