The Totnes Monster: The Story of a Great Sperm Whale, and a Rotting Tub Full of Greek Seamen: The Story of a Sperm Whale

by Dimitri Kissoff (Author), SteveCurrie (Illustrator)

• Used

  Paperback
  2014

  $3.46

  In a riotous Nantucket sleigh ride, The Totnes Monster's rollicking narrative reels surreally from a controversial oil strike in the eponymous Totnes to a creakingly ancient Greek submarine wallowing out of Corfu harbour on its voyage round the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, drunk-driven by the Ouzo-boozy Captain Halitosis Kamakis, formerly of the Royal Hellenic Navy - Along the way, there are the lugubrious musings of a sperm whale named Big Dirk and the sex-crazed Californications of Guru Shami Randi, self-proclaimed Enlightener and Master of the Vagina, whose facial resemblance to a pig owes much to the cocaine - induced collapse of his septum.The aforementioned insalubrious lot soon cross swords with the denizens of formerly sleepy Totnes, now racked with Black Gold fever, among them an ample-bosomed Sex Therapist, the grasping Councillor, the long-suffering Vicar, John Priestley and his newcomer nemesis Swami Tikka Masala - Oh yes and God, who puts in an appearance when the debauchery gets that bit too despicable to put up with, along with a very nasty virus known as SLIM - In amongst all this mayhem and debauchery and ribald satire, Dimitri Kissoff manages to weave in a warped morality tale like a Tom Sharpe on speed (or a Wodehouse on weed) that reeks of the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll tradition of which Kissoff has been a lifelong supporter. And as if these almost preposterously larger than life characters didn't already leap off the page and grab you by the throat, the richly uproarious illustrations with which it's peppered are also reminiscent of those celebrated Paul Sample covers for the Tom Sharpe novels - and they're worth a belly laugh all of their own. The Totnes Monster is a tittering, laugh-out-loud and quintessentially British brand of humour at its blackest.