Grim sex scenes and trite in-jokes recycled pointlessly

So I’m reluctant to say that Julie Burchill’s Ambition is the worst book I’ve ever read in case it prompts anyone to pick it up. But it is definitely in the top five.

A ridiculously implausible plot; stilted, one-dimensional characters; grim sex scenes and trite in-jokes fill the pages of this recycled book.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the book is 20 years old and has been re-released to cash in on the Fifty Shades literary-porn market.

It’s not been written recently enough to have anything relevant to say about modern life or journalism today. And it’s not quite old enough to have retro-charm or pretensions at being a classic.

Julie Burchill was a witty, satirical journalist with a huge following once. And there are still flashes of that wit.

When a young, handsome pop star decides he wants to do his own stuff: “This moment was one every manager, record company and genuine pop fan alike dreaded; the first stirrings of creativity in their young charges...”.

But these sparks of insight and humour are lost in a deluge of pseudo-ironic detailing of the designer-ification of literally everything: “Susan swirled the Czech and Speake bath oil in her Delafon bath and settled back with a bar of their state-of-the-art grey soap.

“She looked around at her Zehnder radiator, Schneider cabinets, Cerabati tiles and White House towels and sighed.”

This cost-of-everything and value-of-nothing attitude was documented to much better effect in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.

Burchill, 53, has been a journalist since she was 17 and initially I thought this book was going to be a series of anecdotes about life behind the scenes of various newspapers.

Ambition centres on Susan Street who wants to be “the youngest ever female newspaper editor in the world”.

Not once does she display the slightest evidence that she merits this job. She seems to have no confidence in her own abilities and instead decides that the only way to ‘earn’ the title is to become the sex slave of the weird owner of the communications empire.

He sets her up for a series of supposedly raunchy encounters in settings ranging from Rio to South Africa. And apparently, if she gets on with these orgies, which the media mogul just watches from behind an observation mirror, she’ll win the prize.

I failed to see how Susan was the slightest bit ambitious as by taking part in these sex games she seems to have forgotten any ambition she might have once had and acts as if she has nothing to offer but her sexual degradation. And if the man setting up these grim sex encounters can’t even be bothered himself to participate then it’s hard to see how this book can be considered ‘raunchy’.

Burchill could aim a great deal higher and anyone looking for a good read should aim for any other book or pamphlet or magazine lying around.

Buy this book