Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #339194 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Empire
`Magnificent … intensely funny'

Independent on Sunday
`Profoundly moving … far too clever, too assured and too damn good to be a first attempt'

Observer
`Beautiful … Almost every passage of this book hums with particularity and vision'

Customer Reviews

Surprising
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Its notorious reputation is based largely on those first few chapters, which concentrate in some depth on Thomas's unsavoury toilet habits. If it had carried on in that vein I'm not sure I'd have carried on reading it, but it picks up and it was ultimately rather moving and brilliantly evocative of the period and Thomas's surroundings. We could do with more great books like this from Bruce Robinson, as well as more films. I'd certainly read a "what Thomas did next" sequel.

A difficult read and ultimately unsatisfying (review contains some spoilers)
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. 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 others, 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.

Surreally superb
Peculiar is right. Apparently this is autobiographical, which may just go to prove the truth is stranger than fiction thing all over again.

Thomas Christopher Penman himself is a rather peculiar, entirely normal adolescent boy, with coprophiliac tendencies and an entirely normal obsession with getting access to his grandfather's pornography collection. He seems to have as much chance of winning the heart of the fair Gwen as he does of finding out why his mother has hired a private detective.

People will talk about the woman with the duck, hitting the vicar with a rabbit, or a thousand other details from this book, so that you might be forgiven for imagining a series of 'peculiar' scenes strung together like beads. In fact, the most peculiar and wonderful thing about this book is Thomas'/Robinson's acceptence of the bizarre behaviour of the adults around him, and the beautiful twist at the end, when it takes a fortune teller to reveal his past.

If you liked The Wasp Factory (it's not as violent), or anything Roddy Doyle ever wrote (it's not as sentimental), you will like this. And the last line is one of the coolest things I have read in a while.