Robin Anderson Author Reviews

Defunct Gristle

"An Unappetizing Title for a Very Readable Book"
Amos Lassen

Anthony Fortesque is very, very angry and an angry drag queen is nothing nice. We see that he did not
fully understand the intentions of one Hamish MacFadden and his set him off. Hamish has everything a
well adorned drag queen could want only he does not want Anthony. Anthony wants a "big white hunter"
and he soon realizes that Hamish is not at all fond of hunting (and not of Anthony either). What is a "gurl"
to do but seek revenge and Antony enlists Petra Gonzales and Mike and Damon and things get very evil.
What had once been an African dream for Anthony changes into a nightmare and we are there.

Anderson has lived in Africa so he knows what he is talking about. However if the characters are based
upon people he knows, I am a bit worried about him, here is another dark adventure in the Anderson style
and it has the expected twists and turns and larger than life characters. Because the plot is meant to be
experienced by every reader, I can give nothing away but I will say that this is Robin Anderson writing at his peak.

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Sally Farmiloe-Neville - Hot Gossip

DEFUNCT GRISTLE, as the title suggests, is even more imaginative in its crimes and cavortings and sports odious anti-heroes, Anthony and Hamish. One presumes that their ends, like their lives will be, er, sticky but the ingenious ANDERSON likes to keeps his readers on their toes, so to speak, and provides a neat twist to the tale which will surprise you, ANDERSON fans.

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★ ★ ★ ★

A review from Jason Jones, Gaydar Nation

“Making his way to the freshwater spring which supplied the house boat’s drinking water, he proceeded to take a long, powerful, satisfying shit into the bubbling spring. As a final gesture he then took a long, foul smelling piss into the same. Giving a generous fart followed by a deep belch the giant man then lumbered slowly back to the land rover.”

This is what I first read when I randomly flicked through Robin Anderson’s ninth novel Defunct Gristle – he plans to be up to number 12 by the end of this year making him a kind of queer Barbara Cartland, although obviously heavier on the smut and sleaze – and I quote it because it so succinctly sums up the author’s tone and style. Hysterically hyperbolic, bodily function-fixated, a touch porny – all of his now familiar flourishes are present and correct. Or, more accurately, incorrect because correctness of any description is definitely – and defiantly – not part of the Anderson literary arsenal and this latest offering is just as deliciously demented, dirty and daft as its predecessors. Most importantly, though, it’s never dull.

“Hell hath no fury as a cross-dresser scorned” is the book’s strapline so you know the plot isn’t going to be a genteel preamble through Jane Austenian polite society even though it’s set in that same upper-crusty world. Anthony Fortesque is the drag queen in question and his ire has been stoked by the dashing Hamish MacFadden (think Jilly Cooper’s famous/infamous Rupert Campbell-Black creation but younger, or as Anderson delicately describes him in slightly breathless italics “Mr Sex on Legs with a prick that’s thick”; is that a haiku?)

The reason for Anthony’s rage? Well, Hamish has the audacity to spurn Anthony’s advances on account of the little matter of his heterosexuality. Not used to not getting his own way, Anthony hatches a revenge scheme to make the handsome Hamish’s currently charmed life an abject misery. In the process, there are all manner of mad machinations, weird’n’wonderful encounters and ludicrous larks to be had as the plot ricochets around the world from the elegant drawing rooms of Belgravia to the dark corners of Zimbabwe to the cosmopolitan pleasures of Cape Town.

What’s impressive about the novel is Anderson’s command of his material. So, while the narrative glob-trots away at warp speed and characters teem from the pages in plumes of flamboyant colour, the author keeps all the plates spinning in the air seamlessly. He never loses control of the story or his authorial intent and voice, meaning that no matter how crazily convoluted the plot gets or how excessively extravagant the cast of characters is as a reader you still believe in the truth of a situation or an action even if it’s so far removed from reality it might as well be from another galaxy, one that’s definitely far, far away.

The reason it comes over with such surety is because Anderson sticks to the Mark Twain dictum that you should always write about what you know. Anderson spent his childhood in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and now resides in a rather smart studio in London’s flash Chelsea so he’s well placed to write about the two contrasting worlds depicted here with such a precise and knowing eye. One would hope that the slightly more grisly elements of his writing are less autobiographical, but having met him a few times I imagine there’s a steely dark side lurking beneath the impeccably polished exterior if you dare cross him.

And that’s really the beating heart of Anderson’s writing – excavating beneath the varnished surfaces of life to unearth the naughty nitty-gritty of its underbelly. I eternally find this bizarre/fascinating because Anderson is the personification of rah Brit poshness. With his clipped enunciation, dapper suits and Nancy Reagan hair, he reeks of rarefied so it comes as something of a shocker that his head is filled with such twisted filth.

Ultimately, reading Defunct Gristle is what I imagine it would be like to rummage through Lady Gaga’s handbag: glamorous, outrageous, endlessly surprising and more than a bit mucky. Classic Anderson, in other words.

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