As the novel opens, it seems that our 27-year-old protagonist Steven Stelfox - one of those characters you should by rights hate, thanks to his casual, ingrained sexism, racism and bloody-minded attitude, but at the same time end up loving due to his charm, ability to rattle off memorable one liners and ultimately admirable ambition - is pretty on top of things. He has a hugely overpaid job developing artists for a record label, an office to himself and a nice pad in Notting Hill. But Steven wants more - he won't be happy, in fact, until he reaches the very top of his game. And he knows that to do so will involve driving all of his rivals out. Kill Your Friends details Steven's journey through 1997 as he goes to ever more extreme lengths to make sure this happens - even extortion and murder aren't off the cards.
Look up basically any review of this book and the writer will quickly turn to comparisons with Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho. And this review is no exception, because the similarities are obvious - the protagonist's internal monologue throwing an aggressive eye over his surroundings, the business meetings where everyone acts nice but are really out to destroy each other, and the prevailing satirical commentary on how we have created a society where psychopathy is just about the only way to make it to the top. But Niven does approach it all from a much more British - or perhaps English - angle: his character's seething disdain for the working class, for example, coming more from a point of institutionalised elitism rather than capitalist insularity. Likewise the violence is dialled down hugely in comparison: while American Psycho positively revels in it, Kill Your Friends drops in just a couple of scenes where necessary, just to remind us not to get too attracted to Stelfox's life choices.
And while we're talking about Brett Easton Ellis, I personally found a lot of parallels with his other famous work, Less Than Zero. Because Steven Stelfox ultimately sits somewhere between Patrick Bateman and Clay - while on the outside he may be a confident, ruthless young man, he freely admits that he's never really in control of his career or life, it only taking one bad signing or risky decision gone bad to end a career. And then there's the endless whirl of drink, drugs and partying that can only ever take its toll on a young mind, becoming less and less fun yet somehow more and more necessary and, just like in Less Than Zero, leading nowhere good for the purposeless young people who choose this lifestyle. Most sobering of all is that Steven actually does manage to break out of this cycle, realising that to rest on your laurels is to admit defeat and taking his plotting to the next level.
It all sounds very dark. But Kill Your Friends, on balance, is more of a comedy - albeit a very black and satirical one. It's an irreverent look at British society and culture, and a reminder of just how odd things were back then - we elected a Labour Prime Minister who spent millions on travel and entertainment in his first year in office while simultaneously cutting social benefits (a strategy that makes him a "top lad" in Steven's book), experienced a very un-British public outpouring of emotion following the death of Princess Diana, the two biggest songs of the year were a twenty-five year old Elton John track and the Teletubbies theme tune, Radiohead came out with an album that everyone hated but is now considered one of the best of all time, and Oasis came out with an album that everyone loved but is now considered pretty poor. And the final message is clear enough - deep down, all we really want is to make a bit of cash.
Kill Your Friends got me into Niven in a big way - enough to acquire its sequel and another of his novels, which will be the next two things I read.
4.5/5
And for the record, Be Here Now is nowhere near as bad as people say it is.
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