DATE PUBLISHED: 2011
DATE READ: June 2011 (audiobook)
NOTES: The King of the Badgers shows Philip Hensher at the top of his form. If you liked The Northern Clemency you will love this. Set in a fictional North Devon town, the book is inhabited with a huge range of (mostly awful) characters. On the surface everything seems fairly conventional but it doesn’t take much scratching to find out the reality of their lives. In these genteel streets there is adultery, betrayal, cheating, lying, lying and megalomania! Catherine is thrilled that at last her son is coming to visit – and is going to bring his boyfriend. But David never succeeds in attracting a boyfriend and persuades the desirable Mauro to accompany him and pretend to be his partner to please his mother. Kenyon and Miranda seem like the ideal couple except he is having an affair and their daughter is an appalling. Sam is a cheerful owner of a cheese shop in a long-term relationship with Harry but this doesn’t prevent them from joining in the local gay couplings. The gay orgies portrayed are shown to be funny but at the same time somewhat pathetic. And then there is John Calvin the mad-as-a-hatter Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator.
The part of the book that is definitely not funny is the disappearance of China, a child from the local housing estate. Actually I retract that statement – there is much comic material here in the attitudes surrounding the disappearance. But the part dealing with what happens to her subsequently is unfunny in the extreme. He uses a different writing style and relates the shocking details as if he were telling a fairy tale.
The whole book buzzes with ideas and observations. Among the choices for Miranda’s book group are Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas and The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. (Ye gods, I’d be drummed out of my book group if I made suggestions like these!)
A sharply observed black comedy.
DATE READ: June 2011 (audiobook)
NOTES: The King of the Badgers shows Philip Hensher at the top of his form. If you liked The Northern Clemency you will love this. Set in a fictional North Devon town, the book is inhabited with a huge range of (mostly awful) characters. On the surface everything seems fairly conventional but it doesn’t take much scratching to find out the reality of their lives. In these genteel streets there is adultery, betrayal, cheating, lying, lying and megalomania! Catherine is thrilled that at last her son is coming to visit – and is going to bring his boyfriend. But David never succeeds in attracting a boyfriend and persuades the desirable Mauro to accompany him and pretend to be his partner to please his mother. Kenyon and Miranda seem like the ideal couple except he is having an affair and their daughter is an appalling. Sam is a cheerful owner of a cheese shop in a long-term relationship with Harry but this doesn’t prevent them from joining in the local gay couplings. The gay orgies portrayed are shown to be funny but at the same time somewhat pathetic. And then there is John Calvin the mad-as-a-hatter Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator.
The part of the book that is definitely not funny is the disappearance of China, a child from the local housing estate. Actually I retract that statement – there is much comic material here in the attitudes surrounding the disappearance. But the part dealing with what happens to her subsequently is unfunny in the extreme. He uses a different writing style and relates the shocking details as if he were telling a fairy tale.
The whole book buzzes with ideas and observations. Among the choices for Miranda’s book group are Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas and The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. (Ye gods, I’d be drummed out of my book group if I made suggestions like these!)
A sharply observed black comedy.
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