A-Z Challenge Review: Raw Food by James Austen

Yes, I know I've already done a 'R' book but I thought I'd do another one. It's my challenge :P.

Why I Bought the Book: The author friended me on Twitter and I followed a link to his Good Reads blog.  His posts were amusing and so I checked out the blurb of Raw Food, his self published book, and decided to buy.  This just goes to show what can happen if you target the right people people and also how boredom can be a dangerous thing for me :).

Plot: This short (which is about 21,000 words) tells the story of Joe who has recently started a new job in Soho, London.  On his way home from work his eye is caught by a raw food restaurant and he stops to check out the menu.  As he's standing there another man, Francis, engages him in conversation and a bit of flirting and they decide to go for a pint. It turns out that Francis is an enthusiastic proponent of the raw food diet and lifestyle.  Not only that, but Joe is swept away by Francis' boundless energy and overt flirtatiousness and so he agrees to go back to Francis' flat to find out more about raw food.

The story itself is a rather outrageous comedy with a great deal of British toilet and bottom humour.  I found myself laughing on a number of occasions at some of the things Joe and Francis get up to, and I don't think I can ever look at a banana in quite the same way again!  There's a really good light-hearted tone to the story helped by a couple of engaging leads in Joe and Francis.  I have to admit, I'm never hugely fond of sex scenes involving food, but I found myself enjoying these. I think it was because the sex was supposed to be funny as well as erotic, after all it's quite difficult not to derive some amusement out of the creative way fruit is used during the story.

Characters: Joe is very easy to like. He's a bit of an innocent and spends much of the first part of the story in wide-eyed wonder, firstly at Francis' overt come on and then at some of the things he discovers about himself.  Francis is older and has a whirlwind personality. This meant that Francis does most of the talking whilst Joe spends much of the story in a bemused but accepting state of mind.  This difference between the main characters was one of the more effective parts to the book.  Alongside Joe and Francis we meet a handful of odd characters: the lecherousness ex-porn film maker, Charles; the drugged up prostitute, Button (whose conversation with Joe about the band Radiohead was another scene I enjoyed a great deal); Joe's boss, Marty; and the chef and owner of the raw food restaurant.  These characters flitted in and around the main pair adding a depth to the story which worked well, even if some of the scenes were slightly bizarre.

Overall: I've mentioned most of the things I liked about the story already but I did have some niggles.  Firstly, it was very obvious that this is a self published story.  Don't get me wrong I've read and reviewed a number of self-pubbed stories on this blog so I've nothing against self-publishing in general. However, this story could really have benefited from an eagle eyed friend of the author reading over it before publication.  There are a large number of homophone errors (manner/manor, wear/where, etc), at least one name switch and a lot of other typos and apostrophe errors.  Whilst I rarely mention the odd slip in a book, there were so many mistakes in this book that it began to annoy me after a while.  Another thing that was a bit odd was that the author would often mix first and third person narrative within a paragraph.  The story is written in the third person but Joe often thinks in the first person.  This was quite clunky and distracting, and a good editor would have ironed out that error.

One final niggle is to do with the story, rather than the writing.  I enjoyed the story, but there was a very odd scene towards the end when Joe seems to gain some bizarre special power to multi-ejaculate which jarred a little with the contemporary setting.  It was a bit of a 'huh' moment in what had been an unusual but straightforward comedy about sexual kinks.

If you're looking for something fairly short and humourous to fill in gaps between longer books then this story could be just the ticket. I liked the characters and the situation was funny enough to make me laugh several times.  Raw Food gets a grade of 'Good' from me, but would be higher if the author irons out the mistakes and I shall keep an eye out from this new-to-me author in future.

Buy this book at Smashwords HERE or at Amazon HERE.