Babbletower by Jude Mason

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel 

Title: Babbletower

Author: Jude Mason

Publisher: not known 

Source book: Babel Tower by AS Byatt

If you are a regular reader you will already have guessed that I haven’t read the source book. And if you aren’t; OK, I admit it. Babel Tower is described by The Guardian as the AS Byatt book to avoid. And as I don’t much like the sound of it, I’m going to take that advice.

However, there is another Guardian article, from 1996, that tells me all I need to know. Well, almost. Unfortunately it doesn’t tell me if smelly, raucous, arrogant author Jude Mason’s publishers get a mention which perhaps they do because Babel Tower features an obscenity trial. 

Yes, apparently Babbletower by Jude Mason (is it obscene? should it be banned?) is an Arthurian legend written on an off day, a beastly myth in which the characters are horrible to each other in the name of perverted idealism. Or something. Let’s not go there. 

This is just the sort of stuff I will go out of my way to avoid so I will definitely be avoiding the source book even more, because apparently it is full of extracts from Babbletower. Oh dear. 

Grateful thanks to The Guardian because when I have learned about a book within a book I usually feel the need to find out more. But that’s quite enough of that. Why do so many authors feel the need to write about seriously horrible stuff?

The building of the Tower of Babel from the Bedford Book of Hours thanks to The British Library