Meltdown door Ben Elton

1.      Title-explanation

The book is called “Meltdown”. It’s about a man, Jimmy, who’s got a very nice job: he’s a co-manager of a huge bank. He earns a lot of money, but then it’s crisis. Everyone wants their money and the bank is going to be failured. But very slowly, so that’s why the book is called Meltdown (it’s going down, but not suddenly: slowly).

2.    Summary

Meltdown by Ben Elton

Distance might lend more weight to Ben Elton's riffs

Onderkant formulier

Ben Elton's new novel is as topical as it is possible to be; in fact, too much so. Elton, so brilliant in so many ways, always retains an element of being the wee smarty-pants of his class, unable to understand why the other kids don't like him for shooting up his hand and shouting out the answer before anyone else. His recent contemporary novels, such as Dead Famous(satirising Big Brother) and Chart Throb (riffing on X-Factor), worked well as closed-system, small-scale slices of UK culture.

But in Meltdown he scatter shots bankers, New Labour, London lifestyles, cash for honours, Notting Hill nannies, private schooling, immigration and the G8 concert of 2005, and struggles to involve us with any of it. This is the London of the Evening Standard's ES magazine, as hackneyed as someone making jokes about people with knives outside their big house in Hackney, which this book also does.

It follows four unpleasant chums from university: Henry, a Labour MP who gets done for expenses; a rude rightwing fake toff called Rupert (who sounds very like Jilly Cooper's timeless Campbell-Black, but devoid of the charm) who buys a peerage and gets pilloried for retiring with a huge payoff after running a large bank into the ground; Lizzie, a gorgeous lifestyle goddess; and Jimmy, a merchant banker who aims too high and ends up penniless in his five-storey Notting Hill mansion (though apparently not penniless enough to consider renting out any of its 30 rooms).

Meltdown is about Jimmy, a bank co-manager. His life was very sad: he used to drink a lot of alcohol and used to get a lot of cocaine. When he met Monica, he fell in love. Because of her, he stopped using drank and alcohol and changed his life. He married Monica and got two kids: Toby and Cressida. Monica, Jimmy and their kids lived in a huge house. They even had an elevator in it.

The book begins at Jimmys goodlife: going to work every day, when he gets home, his dinner is already made by Jodie, their nanny. After that, he plays a bit with his kids and Jodie

gets them to bed. Then he watches some television with Monica and goes to bed.

A few chapters later, Jimmys life changes a lot because of the bank crisis. Most of his customers want their money back, before the bank gets a bankruptcy. Because of that, Jimmy needs to borrow money from his best friend and colleague Rupert. Rupert says it’s okay to borrow 2 million pounds, so Jimmy can pay his tax etc. until the crisis is finishes. But then suddenly Rupert dies, he got a car accident. Rupert’s wife, Lizzie is really sad and down after that. She doesn’t even want to go to his farewell at the bank. She says that Jimmy and Monica can still borrow the 2 million pounds, but Jimmy and Monica don’t really want that. They feel really sorry for Lizzie.

Jimmy and Monica try to save some money, not to spend every single pound they got, but they hardly can’t do that. They need so many food etc. for the kids and they don’t want a smaller car for example.

The schools are also having some problems with the crisis. That’s why Jimmy has to go to Tobys school to talk to the head teacher. He says that Toby has to go away from this school. There’s no particular reason for it, but Toby has to leave. Jimmy tries to give the head teacher some other ideas or solutions, but it won’t change the head teacher’s opinion: Toby has to leave the school. Toby could go to his old school unpaid, but Jimmy and Monica have to pay the new school for Toby. They hardly can’t afford it, but mannish it though.

Jimmy also tries to live with whole England. If something’s a trend, he has to do everything to join that trend. When something became a trend, Jimmy always says: “It’s the new rock ‘n roll.” He first thought the crisis was ‘a new rock ‘n roll’ too, but it wasn’t.

Those are just a few of the problems Jimmy and Monica have after the bank crisis broke out in England. Jimmy gets constantly thoughts and memories about Rupert. After a few days, he realises that he’s really tired, but life goes on and he can’t just go sit down and wait ‘till the crisis is finished. He has to do something, but what?

(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/07/meltdown-ben-elton-book-review )

3.     

Theme

The book has a few themes. The first theme is love. Jimmy – the person who tells the reader the story – could be in a rehab all his life long, but because he met Monica and fell in love with her, he stopped using drank and cocaine and built up a new and better life. Sometimes Jimmy just wants to sit down and sleep for a few days, but because he loves Monica and his kids, he’s going on.

The second theme is friendship. Jimmy owned the bank with his best friend, Rupert. They shared everything and when Jimmy slowly became a victim of the crisis, Rupert promised he’d lend Jimmy 2 million pounds, so Jimmy could still pay the tax. When Rupert dies, Jimmys life changes a lot. Not only does he have much affliction and pain, also he has to deal with the crisis. Rupert’s wife promised Jimmy and Monica that they could still borrow 2 million pounds, but they refuse that. They said that they couldn’t take that money away from Lizzie when her man just died and she has a lot of affliction.

The third theme is addiction. Before Jimmy met Monica, he was addicted to alcohol and cocaine. When you read the book, it looks like Jimmy and Monica are addicted to luxury stuff. For example, they have an elevator in their huge house, two big cars and their furniture is really expensive. Toby and Cressida are already used to the luxury stuff, when the crisis breaks out and they have to live with a lot less money.

The fourth theme is death. Jimmy’s best friend, Rupert, died because he had a car accident. Because of that, Jimmy’s life changes completely.

The fifth theme is crisis. Jimmy is a co-owner of a huge bank in London. But because of the crisis, the bank is going to be failure. This has a huge impact at Jimmy’s life, because he’s needed to stop buying everything he likes and he has to save up some money.

4.     

Characters

Jimmy is a very social and helpful man. He has a lot of friends and they go on really well with each other. He tries to help everyone who needs help. He loves his kids and wife really much, sometimes he tells them that he loves them literally, sometimes he shows them his love in other ways.

Monica is Jimmy’s wife, she’s very social too, but a bit more worried than Jimmy. She’s best friends with Lizzie – Rupert’s wife – and feels her emotions too when Rupert dies. When Lizzie decides not to go to the goodbye-party for Rupert at his office, Monica stays home too. When Jimmy’s not coming home one evening (he was in a bar with his friends), she’s really worried. But when Jimmy calls her and tells her he’s alright and he will be home in a few minutes, she’s not worried anymore.

Rupert was Jimmy’s best friend, but he wasn’t that kind to other people than Jimmy and Monica. Because of that, other people thought he was like an evil man, didn’t care about other’s and just wanted to earn as much money as he could. But to Jimmy and Monica Rupert was very kind. He shared almost everything with them, even his money.

Lizzie is Rupert’s wife. She’s really kind and helpful, but also a bit quickly worried. When Monica and Jimmy kind of show that they need money, she immediately makes a plan to help them. She wants to lend them 2 million pounds – so a lot of money – just because they’re her friends and she loves them. When Rupert doesn’t come home that early, she’s immediately worried. But when it shows that he concerns was right and her husband died, she’s (of course) really sad. She changes in kind of a depressed person.

Jodie is the nanny of Jimmy and Monica. She’s very helpful: she takes care at their children when Jimmy and Monica are at work or at another place. She also makes the dinner every day and does the dishes and laundry. She’s very good with children, the children like her almost more than their own mother, because Jodie takes care of them and does nice things with them.

5.     

Plot

- Jimmy meets Monica: before he met her, he was addicted to drugs and alcohol.

But because he almost immediately fell in love with her, he changed his life and became a much better person.

- The crisis breaks out in London: the main person in the story is a co-owner of one of thebiggest banks in England. When the crisis starts, his company is going to be failure. He has to be careful with his money and can’t buy everything he won’t immediately need.

- Rupert dies: before he died, Jimmy, Monica made a deal with Lizzie and Rupert. They were allowed to borrow 2 million pounds, because Rupert and Lizzie were sure that Jimmy and Monica would pay them back as soon as they had the money to pay them back. But when Rupert dies, Monica doesn’t want the deal. She cares more about Lizzie than about the save up she and Jimmy would be needed to do. Rupert’s death has a huge impact at Jimmy’s life. Not only would he have less money to spend, he was also his best friend, and now Jimmy suddenly has to live without him. Jimmy and Monica haven’t got enough money to pay Jodie, so they would also have to do everything by  themselves, which is a very weird feeling for them.

6.     

Setting

The story takes place in London, it’s said literally in the story, so that’s not hard to guess. The story takes place around 2005. Many situations which happened around that time in England got a part in the story. For example: New Labour, Notting Hill nannies, private schooling and the G8 concert.

 7.      My opinion

I wanted to read this book because I had heard about it on the internet. Many people say Ben Elton writes many good books, so I searched for a few reviews and they said it was a very nice book. I know many kids and teenagers from England read this book. I thought that I could read the book in like one or two weeks, but I read a bit more slowly than the kids from England, so I needed a bit more time for that. I needed like three weeks for readings this book, and I read it almost every evening. I thought the book would be a bit easier than it was.

I didn’t really know what the book was about when I searched for it on the internet, I only knew that many people, mostly from England, liked it a lot. I thought it was about a normal man, with kids and a wife, who just lived his happy live. But the story changed after a few chapters. The happy life of Jimmy changed because of the bank crisis. I think that the writer told a very realistic story about a man, his wife and kids in a time of crisis. He describes the development of the crisis and the impact at their life really well.

I thought there would be a clue at the end, but that was not like that. The story just ended, suddenly. I don’t really like books with this kind of end, so I was a bit disappointed because of that.

I liked the story though: it was written with a sense of humour and you could almost feel the emotions of the main people, which I liked: because you can almost feel their emotions, you get the story way better.