Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

I wanted to like this book. I liked the basic premise - a crashed airliner whose passengers have maintained a nineteen-fifties, public school society are invaded by the sole survivor of an "I'm Not A Celebrity, Get me Out Of Here" TV endurance/reality show.
The Wilt-like character at the centre of the plot is an archetypal English lower middle class loser, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, divorced, skint, emotionally stunted, blah, blah, and very much blah. There doesn't seem much about his life that he likes, and there doesn't seem much about anything at all that the author likes. His satire bites at reality TV, TV producers, English men, chavs, modern society, 1950's society, feminism, ex-wives, the public school system... he really doesn't have a good word to say for anyone. Which is a shame, because he can plot, he can write, he can do dialogue, but he can't invest the book with any warmth, any heart, any positivity. And to write a book which will be enjoyed and appreciated by anyone not terminally addicted to schadenfreude, then, like the song says, "You gotta have heart".