Rob Doyle’s Cameo skewers literary celebrity in the culture‑war era

Rob Doyle’s new novel Cameo is a perky book‑world send‑up that cartoonishly dramatises the ups and downs of creative life in the culture‑war era, centred on a gazillion‑selling Dublin novelist named Ren Duka. The book takes the form of a vertiginous hall of mirrors: summaries of Duka’s long novel cycle make up much of the text, and his life is hardly deskbound.

Duka mixes with drug dealers, terrorists and spies, serves time for tax evasion, develops a crack habit, pursues threesomes in Paris and eventually returns to Catholicism; at one point, after being abducted in Iraq, he records propaganda in which he denounces his literary rivals. Punctuating the action are free‑floating monologues from voices recalling their connection to Duka — an actor bitter about no longer playing him, a punk novelist akin to Virginie Despentes, and a figure named Rob Doyle — plus an excerpt from an unnamed author’s memoir written in the voice of the Predator and snippets of a near‑future novel about a cab driver amid pan‑European war, alien sightings and cartel leaders worshipping a new AI.

The narration is matter‑of‑fact present tense and deadpan, sprightly with hyperbolic intensifiers (the reviewer notes Doyle is especially fond of the word "satanic"), and the satire is wicked.

Key Topics

Culture, Rob Doyle, Cameo, Ren Duka, Autofiction, Dublin