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Blast from the Past

ben elton

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Ready to follow Nick Hornsby and Helen Fielding as the next big thing from Cool Britannia to hit America is Ben Elton. Already known to a wide public television audience as the funnyman behind Blackadder, The Young Ones, and The Thin Blue Line, Elton, author of Popcorn , lights up the literary sky with Blast from the Past .

Part noir thriller, part hilarious send-up of the politics of extremism, Blast from the Past is the new novel from English comedy phenomenon (stand-up, playwright, television writer, and author) Ben Elton--a name soon to be known in all circles once Joel Schumacher's film of his book Popcorn reaches the silver screen.

In the early 80s, when Polly was a seventeen-year-old ideological peace protestor and Jack was a U.S. Army captain stationed at England's Greenham Common, the two had a secret and very unlikely affair. No two people could have had more to argue about, save that they couldn't live without each other, yet one day Jack came to the conclusion that he loved soldiering more than Polly and sacrificed their love to be a career army man.

Now, sixteen years later, Polly is a lonely thirty-something social services employee and Jack is a four-star general who has returned to Britain to find her, his only true love. With only one night to resolve their differences, and a knife-wielding stalker lurking in the shadows, for everyone concerned this will be a night like no other.


From the Hardcover edition.

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1998

This edition

Format
304 pages, Paperback
Published
October 10, 2000 by Delta
ISBN
9780385334525
ASIN
0385334524
Language
English

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About the author

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ben elton

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Ben Elton was born on 3 May 1959, in Catford, South London. The youngest of four, he went to Godalming Grammar school, joined amateur dramatic societies and wrote his first play at 15. He wanted to be a stagehand at the local theatre, but instead did A-Level Theatre Studies and studied drama at Manchester University in 1977.

His career as both performer and writer encompasses some of the most memorable and incisive comedy of the past twenty years. His ground breaking work as a TV stand-up comedian set the (high) standard of what was to follow. He has received accolades for his hit TV sit-coms, The Young Ones, Blackadder and The Thin Blue Line.

More recently he has had successes with three hit West End musicals, including the global phenomenon We Will Rock You. He has written three plays for the London stage, including the multi-award-winning Popcorn. Ben's international bestselling novels include Stark, Inconceivable, Dead Famous and High Society. He won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for the novel Popcorn.

Elton lives in Perth with his Aussie wife Sophie and three children.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
27(27%)
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100 reviews All reviews
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KingKusanagi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I thought this would be a psychological creepy story. It ended up being something completely different and lighter, till the end. There was part of stalking, which was the creepier part but not too much. Till almost the last lines I didn't expected this end.
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Duevid
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I devoured the book fast, it was an intriguing thriller. The end twist took me totally by surprise!
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Sirus739
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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How many times have you wondered what it takes to make a good screenplay off of a book? I bet nearly as many times as you have seen a movie adaptation of a book. This book made me wonder the opposite, namely how to make a book from a screenplay.

This, in summary, is the shortfall of Ben Elton's Blast room the past. It reads exceedingly like a movie and not nearly enough as a book or a novel.

The central idea of the book while interesting is not sufficiently grave to hold one's interest for long enough. Ex lover from US Army shows up at the doorstep of now council worker and lifelong activist Polly. Apart from this dichotomy Elton also draws on the strength of the changing times and attempts to create something of a nostalgic seventies atmosphere and pit it against the current times. Everything takes place in flashbacks and the length of one evening. The only other character in the book is Polly's stalker, embedded I suspect only for the sake of creating dramatic tension.

I greatly enjoy Ben Elton's writing and this will not be the last book I read of him, that is for certain.

Also, this book could make into a neat little movie methinks.
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KaoruMatsuoka
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Jack is a 32-year-old Captain in the US Army based at Greenham Common - following an encounter in a motorway service area, Jack starts a passionate relationship with 17-year-old Polly, a Greenham activist. But eventually Jack has to move on and leaves Polly devastated.
15 years on, Polly has just about recovered from Jack's betrayal. She has a flat and a job.... but she also has a stalker in the form of Pete, who she calls The Bug. Woken by her phone in the early hours of the morning, Polly is stunned to find Jack, now a 4-star General, has returned. But has he come back to reclaim her or not?.....
This was a really enjoyable read, light-hearted and fun but also with an unexpected plot twist towards the end - 9/10.
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Bitoless
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Это четвертый роман Бена Элтона, прочитанный мной, и первый, прочитанный у него в оригинале.

Ваша первая реакция на телефон, вдруг зазвонивший в 2.15 утра? Уж точно вы не ждете от него ничего хорошего, как и героиня книги Полли. Однако даже в самых смелых своих предположениях она и представить не могла, к чему приведёт этот звонок из прошлого... Сюжет завертится головокружительно, и до самого конца страсти будут только раскаляться. От начала и до конца повествования пройдет всего два часа, но для героев они станут поистине larger than life.

Бен Элтон уже давно значится в списке моих любимых писателей – за хороший слог, за тонкую сатиру, за остросюжетность и остросоциальность и за то, что с ним не бывает скучно. Вот и в этом романе смешалась и любовная история, и история предательства, и триллер, и сатира на современное общество, и хиппи, и вояки, и секс как фактор, движущий современным обществом... В общем, скучно с Беном снова не будет!
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jessifer
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It must be almost 20 years since I read this the first time. The war of gender politics was coming to an end, and the current one is just heating up. I read this to find what arguments still hold true, and I found yes, similar battles, but a different context. Then it was Military Officers, now it is celebrities.

I can say I enjoyed it just as much the second time around, and I literally laughed out loud on a number of occasions. 20 years ago I politically emphasised with Polly more than Jack, now that has changed. Who would have thought freedom of action and thought would become conservative values.

At the foot of this is where do you calibrate your values? Do you calibrate them as the world “is” or as it “should” be. A number of rich white men have been using power to have sex with women that they would not had, except for being rich and powerful. They were arseholes. Should it be illegal to be an arsehole? Do we legislate against this?

Do we accept “Boys will be boys”? Do we think via “nurture” we can legislate 300 millions years of evolution away? For me the question about nature and nurture was answered with the birth of my daughter. She gave her the same environment, but her choices were remarkably different, proto feminine. Nature rules.

The next point is Civilization. The whole point of being civilized is we teach our children and ourselves how to act in a way that goes against nature. We toilet train our children so that when they are 22 they do not think it is just fine to take a dump on the living room floor. Not the way to push their genes forward. Who wants to shag you after you take a dump on there floor (yes – I am sure there is someone with such a paraphillia, but finding them….)

So there must be a balance between both nature and nurture. Sex is such a powerful drive. I am not sure we should make following these drives illegal, except for the most egregious behaviours such as rape. Manners should be taught, but not made a legal requirement. The question then becomes. What are sexual bad manners, and what should be illegal.

Are bad manners enough to disqualify an otherwise qualified person, especially when those manners have nothing to do with the requirements of the job? This book poses a lot of interesting questions, twenty years later…. And it still is funny.
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Govihiv515
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It's 2:15 A.M. and the phone is ringing. Jolted awake, Polly stares wide-eyed at it. She is certain it must be bad news because no one with good news calls at that hour. A wrong number, maybe. But more likely it's the Bug, the stalker who has been harassing her for ages. But as Polly reaches for the phone, the one thing she cannot imagine, the one thing she doesn't remotely expect, is the voice on the other end of the line. Her very own blast from the past.. ""Don't freak out," the voice says. "It's Jack." And so begins a steamy two-in-the-morning stroll down memory lane. Sixteen years ago Polly Slade collided with an American knight-in-shining-armor at a roadside restaurant, when she wore a T-shirt with a cruise missile on it and he fell in love like a man without a parachute. For one summer the coolly polished American soldier and his red-hot anarchist British lover shared hotel rooms and noisy sex in the kind of burning-furnace love that can only happen once in any lifetime. Then Jack went back to America and his oh-so-promising career in the U.S. military. And Polly went on to her demonstrations, an unsatisfactory string of lovers, a dismal apartment, and, of course, the Bug.. "Now Jack is a four-star general. And the Bug is a menace with a knife, standing outside Polly's building as the American makes his dashing return.
Jack is a career before everything else man. Although he flees he is in love with Poly he could not put his career in second place. He has also got mrried since.
All other candidates for the top post and possibly president have been knocked out because they are gay or whatever. Jack has Polly who was a protestor at the nuclear base Greenham Common and so he has come secretly to kill Polly but he is having trouble coming to terms with murdering her. He shoots the bug without a second's thought. The book is brillant on dialogue. And contrasts. issues.
In the end the bug knifes and kills the loud music slam door milkman then is shot attempting to kill Jack. Later Jack's brother now seaparted contacts Polly and they get together. It has a happy ending. When the bug is shot the police arrive and Jack shoots himself as he has trapped himself and his career would be gone everything he ever wanted gone by his own doing.
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