Back in the nineties and the noughties this was, I admit, one of the many books I regretted not reading. This was, I also will admit, one of the books I tried to track down in the many antiquarian bookstores I visited in Dickensian old city backwaters across England during my student days. I regretted and harrumphed that I had lost the reading experience of a book that had gone out of print. And now, after catching up with a re-issue (way hey!) I ask myself why I was so bothered back then and beyond.Begs the question why I was so keen to read in the first place and answering frankly I just love Julie Burchill for her acidic wit and big-dosed deliveries of directness. In her journalism I love the way she doesn’t hold back and fights to be controversial like it’s the right thing to do. I remember lovingly reading her autography ‘I Knew I was Right’ and loving her just as I enjoyed the sympathetic if not melodramatic tones she poured into her ‘Diana’ (‘the’ Diana Spencer/Windsor/royal) biography. By the same token I loved ‘Sugar Rush’ but found ‘Married Alive’ absolutely crap and crass. Ambition certainly doesn’t seem ambitious at all. As a piece of fiction, it’s certainly of its time and has that late eighties vibe as a central theme. The female protagonist Susan Street is a heartless and not particularly talented wannabe newspaper editor who is prepared to do anything to reach her ultimate goal in life no matter who gets screwed on the way both figuratively and literally speaking. The sex in the book isn’t really realistic and I found myself laughing out loud at some of the very implausible shagging scenarios – I don’t really know if this was really Burchill’s actual ‘ambition’ whilst writing the book but she really does send sex up so much so that it ceases to be an erotic entity. With the characterisation there is something ‘Burchillian’ (a trait to those who ‘know’ her) about her characters in that there is always something left wanting and unfilled in each of them. Are any of her characters happy with their fame, great clothes, gadgets and exquisite brands and surroundings? Hell no of course not – that would just be too perfect now wouldn’t it – it simply wouldn’t do.So am I glad I’ve read this book then. Well, for posterity’s sake yet but apart from that no. The characters in this book are so blown-up and blown away from reality for them and the book to be taken seriously at all. It’s all a load of cheap fizz at the end of the day.I had a long-time whim to read this book and catch up with what I thought I was missing out on. In retrospect, I really, really needn’t have worried. Ready for some finer wines now …….
