Lead Review (My Rude Awakening)
- Book: My Rude Awakening
- Location: Berkshire, Shropshire
- Author: Edward Charles Featherstone
I have read plenty of Jilly Cooper novels, so I felt I knew what to expect from this uncensored – “uncut” – memoir /autofiction that comes with all kinds of warnings. If I wasn’t trying to second guess the next ‘event’ to take place in the author’s life, I was drifting off into the world of Rivals and/or Guy Ritchie and the TV series The Gentlemen.
Basically, this is a ‘typical’ story of upper class life in Britain. Or is it? The story starts out at prep school, and Charles, the poor mite, is shipped off as a boarder, soon discovering that he has dyslexia. His resourceful mother and tuned-in school both help him to navigate the difficulties and now he can pen a book that carries the reader along – he has clearly learned to overcome the issues and has developed a really nice and engaging writing style.
A life of golf, polo and shooting awaits (did you know that you should carry shot gamebirds by the neck and not the feet because you don’t want the blood draining into the head from the body, which is to the detriment of the taste and quality when it arrives on the dinner table?) and when he turns 18, he is showered with mind-bogglingly expensive gifts. His family home is a spectacular mansion, populated by staff to run the house and stables. He is taken to school in the Bentley.
Eventually he finds his way into the RAF and trains as a fighter helicopter pilot, which is an absolute passion. And he is very good at it, studying and training alongside his new best friend Jamie.
Charles is a late developer, given his closeted and gilded life, reinforced by the incantations of his mother never to be “rude“. I had a bet with myself as I was reading the opening chapters, given his upbringing, that he would begin his sexual awakening under the tutelage of a much older woman and I guessed this would happen about 1/4 of a way into the book. You will have to buy the novel to see if I am correct.
Anyway. His sexual adventures are raunchy and detailed (not for the faint-hearted), a young man ogling the rise and fall of the female form, tongue hanging out and drooling over his partner’s parts. Is this perhaps a child in man-form unconsciously rebelling against the diktat of his mother? There are some cringeworthy interchanges where each calls the other babeor baby, and I now have Stacey Solomon’s voice in my ear, which I imagine is not the look the author is going for. And yet there is something quite touching about how he is keen to learn and absorb every lesson under the auspices of his experienced partner.
It’s a tad disappointing that the original text seems to have been converted and is now fully aimed at American readers. A duvet needs explaining (a comforter), there are plenty of “gotten“s dotted throughout the text; in England you say someone went out OF the door, not out the door; “thongs” (er, slippers in this context) and people go to the ‘renowned Harrods’, “frequented by the rich and famous” (yes, yes, if you are English you know all this and in England, anyway, you would just say I’m off to Harrods). That undermines the very nature of what the author is trying to do here, to wit create a story that features the very quintessential British aristocrat, gifted with class, contacts and wealth. And a healthy sex life, of course.
In many ways this is a classic bonkbuster, which ends with Charles developing PTSD (not associated with the sexual side of his life, I hasten to add) and in therapy later on (in real life), it is suggested he write down his experiences to start the process of letting go and accommodating the mounting losses in his life. I think the eye-wateringly graphic nature of the content doesn’t perhaps quite fulfil the therapeutic intention of the psychological exercise. However, there is a genuineness that comes through. He has written this autofiction / memoir under a pseudonym (the author is a “hugely successful international entrepreneur“) in order to protect those involved and guard military secrets during his time in the RAF.
If pornographic description bothers you, then this is not for you, but genuinely, there is a level of storytelling here that goes beyond titillation, as a touching love story gradually develops at its heart, and overall there is more to this than might immediately meet the eye. There will be Volume 2 following soon.
Please wait...
