An Oscar-winner for the screenplay to The Killing Fields, Robinson
debuts in the novel with the hilarious and engaging story of a
working-class British teen growing up in the 1950s. Book's end will
bring explanations for the behavior of all, but at the start a
person might well doubt it - when meeting Thomas Penman, for
example, nearly 15 but still preoccupying himself with moving his
bowels anywhere but on the toilet and wrapping the results in bags
for the discovery and delight of others. This is a boy also (when
not constructing bombs) who lies, spies, and eavesdrops obsessively
- traits possibly inherited from his grandfather, who likes to
"[creep] around in the attic with his penis out." It's a credit to
Robinson's Chaucerian skills and enormous human sympathies that he
magically guides his material along the cliff-edge of slapstick
and, without losing the least bit of its comic spirit, transforms
it into the humane, subtle, and moving. Near the seacoast in Kent -
with a passel of rather vile dogs as well - live Thomas and his
sister Bel, their parents Mabs and Rob, and grandparents Walter and
Ethel. Rob, tough and built as if of bricks, is a walking fuse of
near-rage, while wife Mabs, sleeping on the other side of the
house, guards her own secret silence. Dying now of cancer,
grandfather Walter somehow survived WWI (his tale is unforgettable)
but lost his one true love - a void in his life that gives him a
special bond to young Thomas, this being the case for reasons that
will grow clear at last as the boy falls in love, searches the
past, gets into terrible trouble, thanks in no small part to his
weasely friend Maurice and his outrageously stolid and ruinous
parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Potts. Love, youth, and satire delivered
with the verve and allure of, say, Amis - the real one, that is,
not the modernized Martin, but lordly and hilarious Kingsley.
(Kirkus Reviews)
_______________________ 'Hums with particularity and vision' -
Observer 'Never before has the painful, knotty journey to maturity
been depicted with such gusto, and never has the venerable
Bildungsroman received such riotously profane treatment' - New York
Times _______________________ The acclaimed autobiographical debut
novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter Bruce Robinson, the author of
Withnail and I This is the story of a dysfunctional family. It is
about a boy and his grandpa, life and death, sex and hate, dog's
meat and cancer. It is also about pornography, enemas, Morse codes,
puberty, secrets, God and loathing. It is also about love.
General
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