I’m going to start with a book I found at a service station. I bought it because of a course-orientated need to read autobiographies and that is exactly what I got. Cy Flood takes us through his ‘misadventures’ across several popular holiday destinations including Ibiza, Tenerife and Benidorm.This will sound sad coming from a man, but the word ‘sex’ in the title is horribly misleading. It’s only referred to in terms of which reps had the most action and in all cases, said ‘action‘ is never fully described in terms of a ‘confession.’ I’m not complaining about the lack of sexy times, but just the fact that the title is incorrect. The blurb is also a work of fiction. Mr Flood spends most of the time talking about other people more than his own personal experiences, while the back cover promises: ‘He wanted to party like crazy, booze like there was no tomorrow and pull like it was going out of fashion! He got just what he bargained for plus much, much more!’ If he did, he certainly did not write about it here. He does crash his car whilst under the influence, but that’s not exactly the most shining example of drunken fun.
My next problem is to do with the general way in which the book is written. There are so many horrendous punctuation, grammar and even spelling issues that are so bad, it looks like the writer mashed the keyboard in blind hope the letters would come out in the right order.
In regards to content, I’m surprised that Mr Flood managed to write 288 pages about nothing at all. The ‘Holiday Rep’ in the title could be replaced with ‘Landscape Admirer’ and then I could almost accept the drab landscape descriptions. In fact, lets come up with a new title, one that’s actually correct: ‘Sun, Hotels and Airports: What I Saw in Ten Years of Being a Holiday Rep.’ There. Much better.
Right, that’s the unpleasant stuff out of the way let’s talk about the good bits. I can give credit where credit is due. The opening chapter, starring one man, his wife and a toilet brush, was actually entertaining. His acknowledgements in the front were good and he does say that the majority of the book came ‘straight from the diary as they were written,’ but I find this a poor excuse for lazy editing.
I can’t bring myself to recommend this book to anyone except aspiring writers. It gave me inspiration and belief that one day, I may actually be able to make it in the writing industry.
Sun, Sea and Sex: True Confessions of a Holiday Rep by Cy Flood was published by John Blake Publishing in 2004. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)
