3 out of 4 stars
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Founders of Western monasticism realised long time ago that if men were to live without women, they should not live without rules. This story is about a stupid young man. Conceived unexpectedly, though not miraculously, his mother already tired with difficulty of pregnancy died suddenly. He had acquired reputation of a charming young man, he thinks, just as his sister rightly observed "that women are no more than a lock for ‘his’ key, and people in general are an inconvenience". Tired of his home town, he went to London for employment in one of high street banks, he keep blundering about, entering house through front door only to flew from it through window, he ran away from such accommodation four times in eighteen months, stupidly passing over what he supposed to hold on to in the process.
Telling stories of a stupid person and his stupidity can be tricky in sense that the one telling the story may looks and sounds stupid in the process. I almost put away the book at the beginning because the story seemed not to be leading anywhere, but it is really life of Randy Love that was not leading anywhere. He was making every effort to become what his father feared he would become, though he did not utter it to him directly, John Love feared that Randy Love, his son "would end up bumming around the world for rest of his life, running from countless illegitimate children and their mothers!".
Randy Love... at your service presents sequence of events that shows bored Randy using women as playthings. He thinks he is a free spirit, in reality he is a lost spirit floating around boredom, alcohol and sex. It can be easily noted that death of his mother created a gap in his life, gap that cannot be filled by many women he had sex with, not even by his father, who discovered that Randy's mother is dead while he was saying to her, "Morning, my love. It would be my greatest pleasure to leave you snoozing. However, our youngest requires your attention. . ." Though there are examples of his successive brother and sister before him, there is also Michael Goddard, his father's friend, who is voice of common sense and sanity in the story, he refused to be inspired by these.
He only developed what he had discovered as a child, that he can manipulate a situation to his own advantage, it is this vice that led him through his misadventures. One is mystified about the fact that John Love, who has reputation of an adept salesman for Unilever for twenty-five years, who had advised his daughter concerning pecking order at her workplace that she needed to change her look from "delightful" to "formidable" and asked her to " 'Think Lucy Lawless' looks crossed with Margaret Thatcher's character", this same John raised a young man called Randy, "a man without chest" par excellence.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Randy does not merely like sex, because he ran away over and over again whenever women tried to seduce him directly, this is particularly about older women , it seems like what Randy relishes is actually irresponsibility of "hit and run relationship” without commitment, which is no relationship at all. He needs a woman like Nicky to" police his antics" yet he ran away from her.
The story is definitely not for those who are sensitive about explicit description of sex, there are too much of British slangs, the author wisely added index of terminologies and slangs at end of the story. I don't think the book is professionally edited because I found more than five grammatical errors in it. I am giving the story 3 out of 4 stars.
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Randy Love...at your service
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