Ben Elton - Inconceivable

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Inconceivable: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Whenever Sam thinks about babies, he envisages rivers of vomit and sleepless nights. But wife Lucy can't walk past Mothercare without crying. What's more, she can't seem to conceive-not by traditional methods, anyway. Hippy confidante Drusilla suggests an array of New Age remedies, including the intimate use of nutmeg oil and al fresco lovemaking. As Lucy faces a possible verdict of infertility, her love for Sam enters tailspin, accelerated by the advent of arrogant actor Carl Phipps. Meanwhile Sam, desperate to escape his tedious BBC job, conceives the inconceivable-turning the intimacies of their battle for babies into an acclaimed movie script.
Inconceivable tells a poignant and heart-rending story with Elton's trademark wit, creating a novel that is entertaining and emotionally satisfying; as explosive as Popcorn and with the incendiary humour of Blast From the Past. It courageously tackles its central theme from both the male and the female points of view, and while delivering laughs on every page, it steers clear of laddish clichés. Lucy's tale, though pregnant with unfulfilled emotion, never stints on humour. "There seem", she fumes, "to be more urban myths attached to infertility than there are to… film stars filling their bottoms with small animals."
Aside from the rich vein of gags about DIY conception (Sam has to leave a power lunch with the excuse: "Sorry, my wife is ovulating…"), Elton also subjects the TV industry to relentless stand-up-style bombardment, giving birth to some brilliant asides, which enrich the main story but never overpower it. Funny, tragic, true and ultimately heart-warming, this book should be available on the National Health Service.

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“Thanks. We’ll be in touch,” said the PA and Tilda retreated as fast as she could. I suppose in some ways Ewan’s question was perfectly fair. It does seem to be something of a rule these days that, whatever the movie, at some point the girl will have to get her tits out. I’m sure that if they were making The Wizard of Oz today poor little Judy would have been caught in the shower when the hurricane struck or at the very least it would have blown her dress off. Some more right-on directors try to make up for it by including an equal and opposite shot of the leading man’s bum, but it’s not the same. I don’t think you’ll find many women sat on their own in front of their videos late at night trying to freeze-frame the bum shots.

Reading back over the last few pages I note how much I seem to be mentioning attractive women. I think that this is possibly a symptom of the fact that Lucy’s and my sex life is currently nonexistent. I must say, I’m seriously beginning to miss it, but there you go. Yet another irony in the life of couples like us, infertile couples, IVF couples, is that when we try for a baby, we stop having sex.

Dear Penny

Drusilla has come up with another plan. I blush even to report it. She rushed into the office at lunch today with a map of Dorset and the train times from Paddington. She says that Sam and I have to go to the West Country, walk to the village of Cerne Abbas, go out onto the hillside and prostrate ourselves naked upon the penis of the great chalk man that is set upon the slope. Then, well, you guessed it, we have to have it off! It seems that this is an even more fertile and spiritual place than Primrose Hill, far far more so, in fact. Drusilla says that hundreds of couples use it and the conception rates are considerably higher than with IVF. On summer nights apparently there’s a queue and the local druid has to bless one of the big toes as a sort of backup bonking area. Drusilla says that in reflexology the feet are connected to the genitalia so doing it on the foot is nearly as good.

I must say the idea of standing in a queue of hippies waiting to have it off on an ancient penis which would no doubt be still warm from the last lot did not appeal to me much, but Drusilla claims that there’s actually a colossal sense of community. She says people who meet there often become lifelong pals, going off to India together in their camper vans and swapping partners. The very least they do is exchange cards at the winter solstice. Anyway, she demanded, what’s preferable? Standing in a queue with some horny hippies or having my body taken over by a gang of mad scientists from outer space (she means the doctors at Spannerfield).

Well, I told her that I was now committed to the IVF cycle and that I certainly did not intend to interrupt it now. After all, if the ancient spirits have waited since the dawn of time for Sam and me to shag on top of a huge chalk knob then they can wait a bit longer. I told her I’d think about it for future reference. I’ve kept the train timetable, just in case. Not that it’ll be of any remote use in a month or two. These new railway companies keep changing them and they don’t even mean much in the first place.

I will say this, though. If this cycle doesn’t work (which statistically I know it won’t, although I can’t help feeling sort of hopeful), I might give Dorset a go. Sam and I could use a bit of a holiday and I do love him particularly at the moment. We had such a good time on Primrose Hill (until the arrival of the squirrel) that I think it would be fun to do a little tour of the fertile spots of Britain and shag on all of them.

Dear Sam

Rather an unpleasant day on the movie. We were back in the church hall near Goodge Street looking at men, and of course that complete fucking bastard Carl Phipps was reading for the part of Colin! I have to tell you that it was excruciating sitting there being quiet while the smug, philandering, wife-snogging rat was saying my lines . Honestly, it felt like he had Lucy’s tits in his hands all over again, but no I mustn’t dwell on that, it makes me bloody livid and I know that I’ve no right to get on my high horse. All the same, I wanted to punch him.

We were seeing the men one at a time instead of bringing in a crowd like we did for the women. This is because Ewan wants a “name” for the bloke and so they have to be handled a bit more carefully. Actually, I’ve begun to notice that there’s quite a lot of casual sexism in the film industry, which is surprising considering that they’re all supposed to be so right-on. It’s the old rules of the market. There are far fewer decent roles for women than there are for men and so even the talented women are more desperate, hence they can be paid less and treated worse.

Ewan was using the scene where Colin gets his sperm test results to hear the actors read, and I must say it was quite exciting to see the scene come to life. The little blue-haired PA was reading in the part of Rachel. She was wearing a pair of hipsters that hung so low you could almost see her bum, most distracting, particularly since she had a tattoo of a naked Chinese devil at the base of her spine. Girls these days, eh? Amazing.

“‘Forty-one per cent swimming in the wrong direction,’” she read out in that peculiarly depressed delivery that only people who “read in” can achieve.

Carl Phipps brushed her aside and addressed Ewan directly.

“I’ve got stupid sperm!” he shouted, far too loudly in my opinion. Anyone can shout. “The stuff’s been backing away up my dick all these years. What is it with sperm! It’s lazy, it’s sluggish, it’s got no idea where it’s going. It sounds like a pub full of blokes!”

Ewan laughed heartily, which was fair enough because it’s actually a bloody good line, but I thought the delivery was abysmal. Crap, absolute crap. A performance hewn from solid mahogany. Personally I thought that what with the disappearance of the rainforests it was ecologically unsound of him to produce such a wooden performance and I whispered as much to George.

“Actually, I thought it was pretty good,” said George. “The line’s a bit obvious, though. You don’t need to spoonfeed us the gags, you know. Trust the audience.”

I hadn’t really noticed before quite what a pompous arse George can be when he wants.

“Superb, Carl, absolutely superb,” Ewan was saying.

“Yes, and so good of you to agree to come in and read for us,” Justin added.

This was a reference to the fact that Carl is a star and hence should not really have to do such a mundane thing as actually audition for a part because we should all be aware of how brilliant he is anyway. As if the fact that he turned in a passable Tenant of Wildfell Hall should instantly alert the world to the fact that he’d be brilliant at playing a frustrated and infertile executive at the BBC.

“No actor is too big to read for a part, Ewan,” Carl crawled.

What a pretentious twat.

After the low snake had slithered off (no doubt pausing on his way out to try and shag the cleaning woman) we all gathered round to discuss his paltry efforts. I had expected an instant and resounding raspberry, and was bitterly disappointed when Ewan announced happily that he felt we’d found our Colin and everybody readily agreed. I was horrified and protested loudly. Normally I wouldn’t have had the guts, but this was personal.

“Oh no, hang on,” I said. “I mean, hang on! I completely disagree. He’s wrong for it. Totally wrong. I mean, everything he did was wrong for Colin.”

“How’s that, then?” Ewan enquired.

“Well, he was anal, uptight, repressed and terminally stiff.”

“Exactly,” said Ewan happily. “A completely convincing Englishman.”

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