![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Thomas Penman is enduring a very bad adolescence. Growing up in dark, dingy 1950s England, Thomas's problems include an unspeakable personal hygiene issue, an eccentric grandfather who speaks to him in Morse code, an unrequited passion for the lovely Gwen Hackett and an incriminatingly large stash of pornography. To cap it all, his warring parents are having him followed by a private investigator. It's hard to believe that things could get much worse for him, but, in fact, they are about to.
This book was not what I expected and I was really pleased to just finish it.
I suppose that I should have known that the writer behind Withnail And I would not be afraid to shy away from grotesque goings on with bodily substances (afterall, Withnail did like to carry fresh child's urine with him in case asked to give a sample by the friendly neighbourhood plods). However, I was not prepared for the first few chapters to focus on the titular Thomas's penchant for leaving his poo out where people can find it.
Robinson was obviously really taken with this as an initial theme and he explores it lovingly. Admittedly, there are some humorous moments that derive from it. For example, there's a scene where Thomas is caught out in class and on his way to dispose of the evidence (via a number of twists), he ends up putting it in the school cap of another boy (it's funnier than it sounds, mainly because the accurate way with which Robinson portrays the boy's acute embarrassment). In some ways, it's a nasty habit that ties in with one of the themes in the book (namely Thomas's need to bring out into the open things that people don't normally admit) - but that's a very tenuous link and I think that Robinson really does it for shock value.
Shock value is almost certainly behind another focus on pornography and Thomas's attempts to liberate his grandfather's secret stash. Robinson really dwells quite lovingly on the text of a pornographic novel that we're led to believe the Grandfather was writing, which is in sharp contrast to the fact that we're later told that he wrote a legitimate novel that was accepted for publication and regarded as being very good, only to withdraw it on his return from the First World War.
In many ways, the Grandfather is the lynchpin to the story. He is the character around whom Thomas most revolves and there is a really interesting character itching to come out. We are shown that he was a man shaped by horrific injuries received on the Somme (with Robinson using the imagery of maggots and flies to gruesome effect) and who came out a different man. However, Robinson refuses to flesh him out. For example, we know that he appears in pornographic pictures (including one with a woman who has a duck inserted somewhere that could lead to Avian Flu in unusual places), but we don't know why or when. He's a man who's motto is to be kind to other's, but whilst we're shown him being kind to Thomas, he does nothing to directly stop the abuse that we learn that Thomas suffers from his father.
The father and mother themselves start off as interesting characters in an interesting situation. There's is a marriage that's clearly on the rocks and I thought that Robinson was very effective in showing a couple in a stasis of passive animosity, which is fractured by the husband's blatant adultery. However, I thought that Robinson rather ruined the effect when he does his Big Reveal of the reason behind it. If Thomas was a more sympathetic character, then it would have resonated more, but he isn't and because the parents aren't either, I found the scene to be unemotionally uninvolving.
I did think that Robinson captured the nature of the friendship and rivalry between Thomas and Maurice very well. I could well believe that these two 16 year olds alternatively confide in and then try to one-up each other and the fact that Maurice, in trying to extricate himself from an embarrassing discovery by his frankly cartoonish vicar father, is the architect of Thomas's final misery is quite believable.
The ending ultimately felt rushed and the open-ended feel of it did not leave me feeling satisfied, although that's also true of the main plot.
The Verdict:
A difficult and unsatisfying read that's probably best for Bruce Robinson fans and completists only. Or for people who like to read about poo. Incidentally, Bruce Robinson loses marks for having Thomas Penman look in the mirror when he wants to describe what he looks like.
Thomas Penman is enduring a very bad adolescence. Growing up in dark, dingy 1950s England, Thomas's problems include an unspeakable personal hygiene issue, an eccentric grandfather who speaks to him in Morse code, an unrequited passion for the lovely Gwen Hackett and an incriminatingly large stash of pornography. To cap it all, his warring parents are having him followed by a private investigator. It's hard to believe that things could get much worse for him, but, in fact, they are about to.
This book was not what I expected and I was really pleased to just finish it.
I suppose that I should have known that the writer behind Withnail And I would not be afraid to shy away from grotesque goings on with bodily substances (afterall, Withnail did like to carry fresh child's urine with him in case asked to give a sample by the friendly neighbourhood plods). However, I was not prepared for the first few chapters to focus on the titular Thomas's penchant for leaving his poo out where people can find it.
Robinson was obviously really taken with this as an initial theme and he explores it lovingly. Admittedly, there are some humorous moments that derive from it. For example, there's a scene where Thomas is caught out in class and on his way to dispose of the evidence (via a number of twists), he ends up putting it in the school cap of another boy (it's funnier than it sounds, mainly because the accurate way with which Robinson portrays the boy's acute embarrassment). In some ways, it's a nasty habit that ties in with one of the themes in the book (namely Thomas's need to bring out into the open things that people don't normally admit) - but that's a very tenuous link and I think that Robinson really does it for shock value.
Shock value is almost certainly behind another focus on pornography and Thomas's attempts to liberate his grandfather's secret stash. Robinson really dwells quite lovingly on the text of a pornographic novel that we're led to believe the Grandfather was writing, which is in sharp contrast to the fact that we're later told that he wrote a legitimate novel that was accepted for publication and regarded as being very good, only to withdraw it on his return from the First World War.
In many ways, the Grandfather is the lynchpin to the story. He is the character around whom Thomas most revolves and there is a really interesting character itching to come out. We are shown that he was a man shaped by horrific injuries received on the Somme (with Robinson using the imagery of maggots and flies to gruesome effect) and who came out a different man. However, Robinson refuses to flesh him out. For example, we know that he appears in pornographic pictures (including one with a woman who has a duck inserted somewhere that could lead to Avian Flu in unusual places), but we don't know why or when. He's a man who's motto is to be kind to other's, but whilst we're shown him being kind to Thomas, he does nothing to directly stop the abuse that we learn that Thomas suffers from his father.
The father and mother themselves start off as interesting characters in an interesting situation. There's is a marriage that's clearly on the rocks and I thought that Robinson was very effective in showing a couple in a stasis of passive animosity, which is fractured by the husband's blatant adultery. However, I thought that Robinson rather ruined the effect when he does his Big Reveal of the reason behind it. If Thomas was a more sympathetic character, then it would have resonated more, but he isn't and because the parents aren't either, I found the scene to be unemotionally uninvolving.
I did think that Robinson captured the nature of the friendship and rivalry between Thomas and Maurice very well. I could well believe that these two 16 year olds alternatively confide in and then try to one-up each other and the fact that Maurice, in trying to extricate himself from an embarrassing discovery by his frankly cartoonish vicar father, is the architect of Thomas's final misery is quite believable.
The ending ultimately felt rushed and the open-ended feel of it did not leave me feeling satisfied, although that's also true of the main plot.
The Verdict:
A difficult and unsatisfying read that's probably best for Bruce Robinson fans and completists only. Or for people who like to read about poo. Incidentally, Bruce Robinson loses marks for having Thomas Penman look in the mirror when he wants to describe what he looks like.
