Having read Dave Grohl's autobiography recently, in a way, this was refreshing. Grohl's view of the characters inhabiting the music business is rose-tinted to say the least. This is the opposite - everyone is a grotesque.That's fine, but having started out with such a degree of repulsiveness the book soon becomes very repetitive - drink, drugs, debauched sex...then murder. I get the satire - A&R people will do anything for a hit/more money etc to fund their vapid lifestyles but this could ha...

DNF at page 102 Kill Your Friends is basically a diatribe of the music industry in England in the 90's, centring around the main character of Steven Stelfox, working as an A&R man at a record company. It is filled with disgusting, immoral and drug addicted people of which Stelfox is one of the worst. This book is horrible & yet utterly fascinating at the same time - no wonder people are cynical in the music industry! The language is crude, debauched, snide & totally politically incor...

Edit:American Psycho ripoffish. love it... i finally got the sequel Kill 'Em All and i decided to reread this. will i finish this? who knows. it depends on my mood. will probably give up because i also have to study for my exams. also it's not like i'm ever at home sooo.......I got it mostly because i loved the movie and later found out that it was based on a book. it was funny and dark and honestly even though the protagonist is an asshole i dig him. if you like dark humor shit you should check...

Soundtrack - D:Ream - things can only get betterIt is 1997 - the time of Cool Britannia and Things Can Only Get Better. Tony Blair is the fresh faced Prime Minister of a Britain that is newly energised, forward looking and on the upSoundtrack - Stiff Little Fingers - Rough Trade / Pulp - Common People / The Clash - Death or GloryStephen Stelfox is an A&R man for a London based record company. It is his job to spot and nurture new bands. Sadly the job is all about securing product to sell to ...

This book is daaaaaaark. If it was any blacker you'd need UV light to read it. My initial impression was that it was 'American Psycho' minus the violence. Then the violence began.Whereas 'American Psycho' parodied American corporate 80s excess to the extreme, 'Kill Your Friends' parodies the record industry in 90s Britain. Steven Stelfox is an A&R man for a well-known music label in 1997's London. His job is to discover hits and make the company a buttload of money. He doesn't spend a lot of...

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...

A very poorly written book that simply tried too hard to be funny and shocking, but ends up being too direct to be either. A real shame that a satire on the music industry could not be a bit more clever and original.

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...

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 ...

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...