"Kill Your Friends" is a special breed of novel. Reading it, I felt like I was looking through a particularly wide peephole into a sordid world of drugs, sex, and booze populated by soulless characters who somehow live among us. Needless to say, I was hooked. Steven Stelfox is an A&R rep for a major British music label in 1997. His whole world revolves about doing anything --be it illegal, immoral, or just plain wrong -- to get a hit record. This novel is full of fun British slang that I fin More...

I struggled between three stars and four - this book is well written, yes. I gave it four stars for that, thinking the problems I had with it are due to the subjects the novel addresses and not the skill with which the author displays them. There is no hero in this novel; the protagonist is an anti-hero and usually I would be okay with that - and maybe I am in this particular case as well.
Perhaps my struggle with this novel is that despite all of the truly wretched, immoral and sociopathic behav More...

John Niven is what would happen if Nick Hornby got into a terrible car crash and punctured the lobe where politeness lives. I had a heck of a time getting into his novel "Kill Your Friends," since I'm not exactly fluent in vitriol. It is pages and pages of a man angrily screaming British slang for cocaine in your face, spit foaming at the corners of his mouth.

Steven Stelfox is an A&R dude negotiating the Brit pop scene in the 1990s. It's a cruel, cruel place where everyone is trying to find More...

I feel as though I am some sort of hipster when it comes to my favorite author in that he’s relatively unheard of in the States. Having never met another American acquainted with his work before my meddling, I simply want to document the unlikely events that directed me to discovering John Niven.

Niven is a Scottish author who has five published books on record with two more scheduled to be released this year, including his first nonfiction piece about The Clash. His full length debut Kill Your F More...

Tohle je šílená kniha (v tom dobrém smyslu). Brilantní jazyk (pokud vůbec mohu posoudit), příběh, jehož zvraty nelze moc očekávat, resp. to nemá smysl. Hlavní postava, téměř třicetiletý arogantní sebestředný hajzlík pracuje v nahrávacím průmyslu a jeho životní i pracovní náplní jsou koks, flákání se, trochu i ten sex, a když je nutné, tak i nějaká konference nebo návštěva živého vystoupení, aby na oko lovil talenty. Ačkoliv je svými vlastnostmi lidsky odporný, musíte mu fandit.

Co se angličtiny t More...

Easily the winner of the funniest book of the year - possibly ever.

There are more jokes and truths on one page of this book than in the whole of other works of fictions. Its hard to describe - a bit like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho going to indie discos.

It tells the story of Steven Stelfox, an A and R man in the late 1990s and truely one of the most despicable charachters in fiction. His deeds are bad enough but you also get his inner monologue - the things he filters out are beyond bel More...

While I like satire this book by John Niven is satire so vile, degrading and sort of scabrous that it was just too much. There's absolutely no nuance as it's just hammer away by Niven, scene after scene, chapter after chapter of debauched antics. Too bad too as the setting, the music Q & R world in Loncon circa 1997 is rife with the chances to ruffle some feathers. Niven though shows he has no restraint in anything--writing style, plot pacing, nothing.

Usually for one of these books about a More...

A darkly funny book that isn't really a riff on 'American Psycho' as several people have claimed. For a start there is some doubt in AP as to whether Bateman actually carries out the murders described, but here it seems to be quite straight, at least the first murder - whose victim is called Roger Waters, and as this book is about the music business (and not really about music at all), there is little chance of that being coincidence - Pink Floyd's former bassist and creator of 'The Wall' is jus More...

If this was a song, Bret Easton Ellis would be getting a slice of the royalties - 'He does drugs and hookers! He's 27 years old! He kills people and gets away with it! Whilst shouting about popular music! Relief washes over him in an awesome wave!'

The satire isn't anywhere near as sharp as in American Psycho; having a character looking at that infamous Tory poster of Blair done up with devil eyes ('New Labour, New Danger') does not a damning indictment make...

... but man, remember that poster? G More...

It's 1997, Tony Blair is about to storm to power and the music industry is still fuelled by Britpop without realising it's running on fumes. Steven Stelfox, a foul-mouthed A&R man with unsavoury sexual preferences and a terrifying cocaine habit is our guide through the murky workings of the industry: the backstabbing, bigotry and over-riding cluelessness about music. The cavalcade of florid abuse and hedonism is entertaining for a while, as he attempts to further his own career by gambling o More...

A lot of comparisons have been made between this book and American Psycho, which is one of my all-time favourites. I have to agree that it does read almost like an intentional parody of its predecessor but strangely that didn't stop me enjoying it. The lead character is a completely outrageous and horrendous excuse for a human being and ends up more shocking than sinister (compared to Patrick Bateman in AP). It was good to read about a time and place that I have lived through - Britpop-era Londo More...

im not sure if the author is a racist but with words used like darkie and spear chucker..if it walks like a duck and quacks like one...then you just might be a racist.

I couldnt get past page 17 due to seething unnecessary words used. i dont care if its used by people in another country. i work for a scottish based company and ive been to scotland..seen the good and the bad of the lot and they do not behave like the author is writing. sure evil is evil everywhere you go but how the author is tryi More...

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This is without a doubt the most accurate depiction of the record industry that has been novelized. Having lived it myself during the same period this was about (late 90's) i had many a flashback. In order to really see something you have to step away and return with clarity. Although the main character in this novel, a London A&R rep trying to deal with the changing climate of the industry at the beginning of the internet age, abuses himself more than More...

I think he could have made his point with a little less of the uber-descriptive dirty sex detail, which seemed to take up more than its share of the book and made me uncomfortable at times. (As did the narrator's constant references to his libido "nudging the 'rapist' end of the meter.") In fact, I really found the whole novel as disturbing as its greedy, murderous, morally vacant 'anti-hero' was intended to be.

What I could not do, however, was put it down. So I suppose it was well-written...Alr More...

I was given this book and The Second Coming in a publisher's double offer, neatly wrapped up together in a cellophane wrapper. I can only surmise that this is the literary equivalent of someone posting two turds in an envelope through your letter box.

I gave up reading this book after 100 pages. Perhaps it's because I have read so many good books recently that this one seemed awful in comparison; perhaps it just is a terrible book? Either way, I couldn't stand the thought of forcing myself to rea More...

To be blunt, I couldn't be bothered finishing this. I got half-way through chapter 2 and then asked myself "What am I doing here?"

Getting no intelligible answer, I walked away. I'm glad i got it from a library . . .

Kill Your Friends made me realise I spent 6 months of my life in 2005 as an A&R Coordinator at Atlantic Records with the sole responsibility of looking after a cupboard. Organising the cupboard, categorising the cupboard, crawling around on my knees looking for tapes/hard drives/lost demos in the cupboard.

That fucking cupboard.

Kill Your Friends made me realise my career in the music industry meant absolutely fucking nothing. It gave me no useful skills whatsoever and, looking back on it havi More...

The author probably tried to rewrite "American Psycho" into a British version. As far as I am concerned he wasn't very successful. American Psycho really took me in, violence entered my mind in a way it never did before, as if I could suddenly experience somebody else's hatred. As fascinating as this experience was, I also see it as potentially dangerous. Not a book I would recommend to anybody.
But back to "Kill your friends": The main character lacks the implicitness of Pat Bateman's behaviour More...

I fully expected to like this as I loved The Second Coming but I have to admit I found it crass and over indulgent. Granted there are bursts of humour but few and very black. Given John Niven's history of being an A&R man before becoming an author the research is obviously based on fact though I can only hope wildly exaggerated.
I hated the main character and if I met him in real life I would slap his misogynistic, sexist, racist face with all the aplomb as Niven writes. The peppering of cha More...

The narrative goes something like this-

"We took some coke whilst spending lots of money. I don't care about something. I took more coke. I had illicit thoughts about a woman. I took more coke. I don't care about other people. Coke. Chang. Bag."

This formula becomes a bit trite after a few hundred pages.

The narrative is part descriptive, part stream of consciousness and in the latter Niven pulls you through the book quickly and is at times really quite funny and accurate- this works particularly w More...

Yes, this is humor, after a fashion. As the Time-Out review put it, "the humor isn't so much dark as dismally black." The main character (and narrator) is a talent scout for a record label and also a complete coked-to-the-gills psychopath. And yet somehow, due to the personal narration, you're drawn into his story and want him to succeed. (Well, most of the time.)

The author worked this same job in the British music industry during the time the story is set (late 90s, the heyday of brit pop - Oas More...

I can't add much to the other reviews, but this was one of the funniest laugh-out-loud books I've ever read. Set in the world of the music industry, this might be an uncomfortably-true approximation of what it takes to drag a bunch of musicians out of the gutter, make a hit or two and then get out before they ruin everything, because most of them are talentless and will ruin their own chances to make a real shot at fame. I cringed, but laughed through every reprehensible act, every repulsive sce More...

A dark and (mildly) amusing black comedy about the music industry. The satire and stereotyping is laid on with a trowel throughout and there are a few laugh out load moments. I don't get the majority of the comparisons with American Psycho: the violence is pretty sparse and not even remotely as graphic. Plus there is motive behind the murders, it would be a push to say Bateman showed any kind of motive other then sheer lunacy. However, I suppose you could say the character of Steven Stelfox is a More...

Someone told me an old band of mine was mentioned in this book, and it's true! My old band from my distant youth does get a mention.

My goodness but this is brimming with vitriol. This is a fierce tumble through a year in the 1990s through the eyes of a ex-A&R guy who really was there in the 90's music mania. It feels mega authentic, especially if you've lived through it because all the name checks and band references are so on the button.

A bit of a tough read because the protagonist is misog More...

It took me a while to get used to the style of writing and the narrative. It then took a while longer (we're in April by this point, I think) to figure out that this isn't a solid piece of literature, but more an ambling interaction between one man and his unreal, unhinged, fantastical world of Music, Drugs, Dirty Sex and Murder.

The best thing about this read, for me, is the fact that I am him (minus the drug-taking, insane ethereal world, and views on homosexuality...). I laughed at the dark hu More...

1997. Industrie du disque. Un mode de vie et de business sur le déclin.
On passe l'année avec Steve Stelfox, une année, au rythme des diverses conventions et des festivals, qui ne va franchement pas en s'améliorant. Pour lui comme pour son industrie. Fini les années de glandouille à passer plus de temps explosé à la coke, à chasser les filles plutôt que les talents, on se met à l'eau. Fini le boulot à l’ego, il faut travailler.
Une année dans la peau de Stelfox, au rythme effréné conduisant tout More...

Perverse, twisted and completely brilliant! John Niven has a seriously fucked up imagination which I absolutely loved reading. I remember seen the posters for this movie all over the London Tube, but I always forgot to get the book but about 2 years after that trip I remember the book, more like I found a little paper with all the books i wanted to buy during that trip that I didn't/couldn't (ohh the joys of a student budget and a weight limit on my bags!). Obviously when I first started reading More...

In lesser hands the hateful protagonist of this novel would be unreadable. Not so in Niven's capable grasp.
Stelfox is racist, rude, sexist, ruthlessly ambitious and wonderfully honest (at least in how he sees the world). That Niven allows such a fantastic bastard like Stelfox to triumph throughout the book is testament to the man's ability to make you like and even care about his horrific main character. Y
You laugh when you know you should not and grimace at his too accurate and too severe desc More...