Salmon fishing in the Yemen

it seems this sort of humane political satires can only be written in the UK - sort of like Julian Barnes meets Douglas Adams. Or so he would probably like to be thought of.

The plot: a wealthy Yemenite sheik effectively hires the British government to help him implant salmon in the rivers of Yemen; after buying a castle in Scotland, the sheik has come to the conclusion that salmon fishing is the most relaxing and peace-bringing sport in the world, and his country could use some of that. Since Yemen is a smoldering hot desert, everyone pretty much dismisses him as a nutcase, but hey, he's paying the bill so why not... plus, it would make for some killer PR, which PM Tony Bla... sorry, PM James Vent really needs considering how poorly the Iraq war is going. So a dry old salmon expert and a young beautiful woman (PLEASE GOD JUST ONCE CAN WE HAVE A BOOK WHICH DOES NOT HAVE AN OLDER MAN AND A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN WORKING TOGETHER, INITIALLY MISTRUSTING EACH OTHER AND THEN GROWING CLOSER ETC? JUST ONCE?!? KTHXBYE) start looking into it and gradually start to realize that as long as you really believe in something, you can achieve anything... if not for those pesky al-Qaeda who, of course, are dead set against using Moslem land for something as un-islamic as salmon fishing.

Now, it's not that it's not funny, because it is. It manages to get in some pretty good kicks in all directions, and somewhere underneath it all is a very serious undertone of the danger of becoming so rational that you no longer dare dream of anything at all which hasn't already been proven to work.

But the problem is that Torday (this is his debut, at age 60) is a decent storyteller but not a very good writer. Had he stuck to the first person or third person throughout he could probably have made this a better much book, but the problem is he keeps shifting perspective - from diary entries to e-mails to interrogation transcripts etc - and hardly ONE of them sounds authentic. Call me crazy, but I just don't buy that people who are being interrogated by MI5 (or is it MI6? I can never remember) will spend pages on poetic descriptions of the highlands or the kindness of Yemenite bedouines. If this happened once or twice it wouldn't bother me in a satire, but when it's done this consistently, it grates. Who the hell decided that literary qualities were unimportant just because it's a matter of comedy?