Name: The northern clemency
ISBN: 9780007174799

Philip Hensher

The northern clemency

Quite a maddening book to read! I picked it up and dropped it a couple of times before forcing myself to stick with it. On the whole, I'm glad since there are some great sections with good prose and insightful observations about everyday life. However, it's hard to say what the book as a whole is about, and the writing isn't consistently good enough that it's a pleasure to read for its own sake. Coming from Sheffield, it was interesting to see the city represented, but the absence of working-class voices (unless as side characters or occasionally a punchline) stood out. Some how a novel that covers the events of the Battle of Orgreave completely fails to deal with the wider issues, and instead relegates the left-wing perspective to a petulant teenager. (In the same part, the narrative voice is reaching for a way to describe the South Yorkshire countryside, and plums for 'like 

' which feels lazy, especially since no character has a connection to the county.) None of these criticisms are fatal, but the characters we do follow are all of the same middle-class milieu and we rarely are given a particularly interesting reason to care about them. The end section nearly won me back with a poignant chapter covering a move to Australia and a parent's sudden health issue (which struck very close to home for me), but all this was undercut by a bizarre dramatic climax that felt like it was written by an alien studying human interaction for the first time. Also, twice in the novel, characters from Sheffield bump into a hometown acquaintance in London. Ironically, this kind of thing happens frequently in Sheffield (especially for those in the West Sheffield bubble) and earns the city the 'biggest village' moniker, but to have this happen twice in London really stretches credulity and feels contrived. 

Luke Pearce

Quite a maddening book to read! I picked it up and dropped it a couple of times before forcing myself to stick with it. On the whole, I'm glad since there are some great sections with good prose and insightful observations about everyday life. However, it's hard to say what the book as a whole is about, and the writing isn't consistently good enough that it's a pleasure to read for its own sake. Coming from Sheffield, it was interesting to see the city represented, but the absence of working-class voices (unless as side characters or occasionally a punchline) stood out. Some how a novel that covers the events of the Battle of Orgreave completely fails to deal with the wider issues, and instead relegates the left-wing perspective to a petulant teenager. (In the same part, the narrative voice is reaching for a way to describe the South Yorkshire countryside, and plums for 'like Gloucestershire' which feels lazy, especially since no character has a connection to the county.) None of these criticisms are fatal, but the characters we do follow are all of the same middle-class milieu and we rarely are given a particularly interesting reason to care about them. The end section nearly won me back with a poignant chapter covering a move to Australia and a parent's sudden health issue (which struck very close to home for me), but all this was undercut by a bizarre dramatic climax that felt like it was written by an alien studying human interaction for the first time. Also, twice in the novel, characters from Sheffield bump into a hometown acquaintance in London. Ironically, this kind of thing happens frequently in Sheffield (especially for those in the West Sheffield bubble) and earns the city the 'biggest village' moniker, but to have this happen twice in London really stretches credulity and feels contrived. 

Trevor Berrett

For my (in)complete review, go here:

http://mookse.wordpress.com/2008/09/0...

The northern clemency

Reviews

Highlights