Richard Cobb
I read about 86 novels this summer in the course of about 80 days and my enjoyment of the novel has survived. Apart from the six books on our short list for the Booker McConnell Prize, I most enjoyed Allan Massie's One Night in Winter, and Tim Heald's Class Distinctions. Massie's prin- cipal character starts off by making a healthy pronouncement that at once won over my allegiance: 'The one thing I am resolved on, is never to grow a beard, that way sleeping wrapped up in newspapers lies.' It is a very powerful novel about gloomy Scottish drinking and a totally convincing Scottish murder, so convincing that I came away feeling that Fraser, the victim, must have been based on some truly awful Scottish nationalist who met a similar fate. It is also a very grim, dark novel about that 'dome, canny, shy place', Bonnie Scotland, but I don't think it will get a recommendation from the Scottish Tourist Board.
I am one of those who likes reading stories about prep and public schools, Whether in the Fifties, or, more familiar terrain, in the Thirties, I suppose in the certain knowledge that I'll never have to go through that experience again and that there is absolutely no danger of Vice Versa actually happening. Tim Heald's chalky, ill-dressed prep-school masters are con- vincing, and so are the boys. It is an extremely well-conducted excursion back into a past experience that he and I, though at a 25-year distance, have in common. He has now got his prep school out of his system, and I shall shortly be doing the same for my public school.
I did not like James Kelman's The Busconductor Hines, because it seemed to have been written entirely in Glaswegian, and I found this heavy going. I felt bruised and groggy after being exposed to Martin Amis's Money. Perhaps it was too difficult for me. I like novels to be easy. This one was anything but. I also found it deeply depressing; and I don't seek being depress- ed in a novel. There is enough to depress one without having it in fiction.
Previous page
