Bride of the Book God

So, back in January February I posted on Francis Wheen’s most recent book, which was all about the 1970s. Mumbo-Jumbo was published in 2004, I think, but could be considered as a sequel since it covers the period from 1979 (using the election of Mrs Thatcher and the return of the Ayatollah to Iran as his starting point) to something very close to the present day.

And although as alway this is well-written and makes loads of really good points about the way the world is, I found it much less entertaining and more difficult to get into than Strange Days.

And I think I know why.

You see, as I’ve mentioned before, I turned 17 in 1979 and left home to attend university. So the period that is covered by this book is the one where I grew up and established myself as an adult, so a lot of the things he covers are just so depressing and take me back to a period (especially the 1980s) that I just found dispiriting and awful. At least during the vast majority of the 1970s I was too young to understand the gravity of what was going on in the world, but you couldn’t miss it in the early 80s even if you wanted to.

Wheen’s main point, which I largely agree with, is that the Enlightenment was a good thing, in terms of how it looked at the world and the traditions of scientific enquiry and liberal democracy which it fostered. But since the 80s the world has, for all sorts of reason, moved away from those principles and operates on the basis of celebrity culture, dodgy economics and “moral confusion”, and this is generally a bad thing.

It’s just that for all his humour in approaching these things, what underlies it is so bleak in some respects that the (occasionally extremely funny) jokes ring a bit hollow to me.

So, well-written and clever but perhaps it’s all still to close for comfort to be genuinely enjoyable for me.

This is an interesting one.

Mr Toppit is the story of the impact of a series of children’s books on the family of the author, Arthur Hayman, after he is run over by a cement lorry when walking in London. The story is mostly told from the point of view of his son, Luke, who has been immortalised in the books as Luke Hayseed (the series is known as The Hayseed Chronicles) . The novel follows Luke, his mother, sister, and Laurie, the American woman who was with Arthur when he died and for reasons of her own takes up the cause of the novel when she gets back home, and kick starts a publishing phenomenon.

Which doesn’t really tell you very much about the story at all. And it is a difficult novel to summarise or explain, and part of that is that I went into it expecting one thing and actually got something else. I blame the blurb, myself. I have long enjoyed (if that’s the word) trying to match the puff on the back of a book with what’s inside; most of the time it’s all fine, but on occasions they do diverge and that can sometimes affect how I view the tale itself.

So, the paperback cover says

buried deep inside the books lie secrets that begin to shake the Hayman family,

which reads to me that a major mystery will be divulged, and (without giving anything away) that really doesn’t happen. Or maybe the secret that does emerge, while sad, isn’t really a life-changing thing and is a bit anti-climactic.

And it’s a shame, actually, because what you do get is an entertaining and, on occasions, funny story about what happens when something takes on a life of its own in popular culture; when a series of books gets away from the ownership of the person who wrote them and the family he based them on; when people get so attached to something that they feel they are its custodians and know the author’s intentions better than he does; and when people who are looking for something missing in their own lives adapt what they read to try to fill that gap.

I enjoyed reading this; it’s not a great novel by any means but its entertaining, and has some amusing insights into the world of publishing and show business, though to be fair I’m not involved in either of those worlds so it could all be wildly off-beam, but it seemed convincing to me. I particularly liked Luke himself, coping as best he can with a life he didn’t want and a connection with a character which doesn’t really reflect him at all.

My only quibbles are that the big secret isn’t that big; Laurie’s subplot really doesn’t go anywhere; and it sort of ends suddenly without really reaching any kind of conclusion. It also seemed a bit timeless; I think it was set in the 80s but it felt like it was actually set in the 60s, and I found that a bit disorienting.

But I wanted to know what happened and so finished the second half of the book in one sitting, and you can’t say fairer than that, can you?