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I've been a fan of Duncan MacDonald since his Your Sinclair days. Always guaranteed to write absolutely hatstand reviews - including one for an April Fool's megagame Advanced Lawnmower Simulator, a game which he wrote himself and was subsequently featured on the covertape. In later times, he wrote a column for PC Zone and collaborated with a character known as Colin Culk to produce some crazy videos which were increasingly less about games, and more the sort of random nonsense you'd find on YouTube but before YouTube was a thing. In the early 2000s he wrote a blog for the website SeeThru - a project which involved another ex-Your Sinclair writer. It is that blog which forms the basis of South Coast Diaries.



It is, as I'd come to expect from Duncan, utterly hilarious in places and full of surreal characters and situations. I'm led to believe by somebody who knew Duncan, that everything in the book actually happened. It follows his life on the dole whilst living in Hastings, and there's not much more I can say than that without spoilers.



Duncan sadly died before this book was published (it was originally supposed to be released in about 2003 but never materialised). Fortunately somebody must have rescued the text and managed to get it published posthumously. It is a tribute to a great writer and somebody who sadly didn't appear to get the break they deserved.



Good job, bloody good job, mate.

It took me ages to get around to reading this book. It started off OK, and the writing is fine, but the sheer number of characters and the darting around between different groups that the author does, meant I lost track of who was who and what they were doing quite quickly. I finally gave up about two fifths of the way through, having scant idea of what was happening, where it was happening, whether all those people were originally on that boat, why it was being attacked, and whether I should care whether they make some mysterious island which was either cursed or inhabited by barbarians, not that I knew why they were going there anyway.



I put it down because I wasn't getting anything out of it. I picked it up because I got it for free from a Goodreads giveaway. At least nobody can say that has influenced my review!



I might have another go at it if I run out of other books to read, but for now I can't award it any less than 1 star (I literally can't - it won't let me).