Product Description

Shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award: a modern comic classic from 'A British writer to be treasured' (Independent on Sunday) The news couldn't be worse for Tam, Richie and their new supervisor: Mr McCrindle's fence has gone slack. The three of them are duly dispatched to the McCrindle farm, where they finish off the work, then go to England where, after rain-sodden days bashing in fence posts, they wolf down baked beans in their shared caravan and spend their evenings and cash in the local pub. But then they encounter the Hall Brothers -- butchers, rival fencers and local heroes!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30404 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Building high-tension fencing with a couple of rural Scots louts--what could be a more likely premise for a black comedy? An eerie noir fable told in a grim, deadpan voice, The Restraint of Beasts tells the story of an English fence-builder promoted to foreman over two under-motivated labourers. They've just been sent out to fix a badly done fence when events go horribly awry--and not for the last time either. For the rest of the novel, as his charges drink, loaf and pound the occasional fence-post, events go badly amiss over and over again. In a sense, that's all you can truly rely on in Mills's fictional world. It is not giving away too much to say that if you hire these workers to assemble your high-tension fence, you'd best watch your back. Or your front, for that matter. And keep a firm eye on the skies, just in case.

The team travels south to England, where they live out of a damp, cold caravan in the town of Upper Bowland. Here they soon find themselves at loggerheads with the sinister Hall brothers, whose business enterprises seem to combine fencing, butchering, sausage-making and the mysterious "school dinners". "We committed no end of good deeds!" cries John Hall. "Yet still we lost the school dinners! Always the authorities laying down some new requirement, one things after another! This time is seems we must provide more living space. Very well! If that's the way they want it, we'll go on building fences for ever if necessary! We'll build pens and compounds and enclosures! And we'll make sure we never lose them again!"

In between placing Kafkaesque obstacles in his narrator's path, Mills seeds his novel with small, darkly comic touches: Tam's father, whom we last see erecting a stockade round his house "to stop you from coming home any more"; the sound of Richie's Black Sabbath tapes "slowly being stretched in an under-powered cassette player"; the caravan's encroaching squalor; An Early Bath for Thompson, the book that Richie tries in vain to read when they run out of money for pubs. No doubt about it, this is a strange book that only grows stranger as it progresses; with any luck it augurs well for more brilliant, odd work from debut novelist Mills. --Mary Park

Review
'A demented, deadpan comic wonder' Thomas Pynchon 'A heaving cauldron of black humour! I can guarantee that if you buy this book you'll never look at a stretch of high-tensile agricultural fencing in quite the same way ever again' Time Out 'Extremely unusual, finely crafted and funny' Observer 'Clever and funny and rewardingly strange ! in a manner which may be called Kafkaesque' Independent on Sunday 'Unpretentious, comic and intelligent' Daily Telegraph

From the Publisher
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize
'A demented, deadpan comic wonder' Thomas Pynchon

'Extremely unusual, finely crafted and funny… Tam and Richie are two itinerant Scots fencers and would-be heavy rockers with a predilection for beer, distressed denim and long silences. Supervising their work is a task that the narrator understandably regards with some trepidation, particularly after the boss's dramatic announcement that "Mr McCrindle's fence has gone slack". The three are duly dispatched to the McCrindle farm, where they finish off the work… then off to England where, after rain-sodden days bashing in fence posts, they wolf down baked beans in their shared squalid caravan and spend their evenings and their hard-earned cash in the local pub. Things become more complicated when they encounter the Hall Brothers – butchers, fencers and local heroes… Shot through with farcical understatement, ironic and melodramatic climaxes and highly idiosyncratic comic motifs, the novel casts a sharp, merciless eye on the vagaries of contract employment and the work/drink/debt cycle that defines the lives of so many.' Christina Patterson, Observer

'Mills's first novel really is good… The terseness of his vocabulary produces an effect that is oblique and elliptical, yawning with sinister implication, in a manner which may be called Kafkaesque… a forceful and original first novel, clever and funny and rewardingly strange.' Jenny Turner, Independent on Sunday

'A heaving cauldron of black humour… I can guarantee that if you buy this book you'll never look at a stretch of high-tensile agricultural fencing in quite the same way ever again.' Peter Carty, Time Out

'With a tone that wavers as unsettlingly between Ken Loach and Franz Kafka as its locale switches from Scotland to England, Magnus Mills's first novel is a work of rare originality and power… very, very good." Kim Newman, Independent

'Worth shouting about… A comedy which is as black as a pint of Guinness and as dry as a salted peanut.' Harry Ritchie, Mail on Sunday

Customer Reviews

Well-constructed comedy of poorly-constructed fences!
Magnus Mills' has crafted a particularly well-written black comedy around the unlikely theme of fence construction. In 'The Restraint of Beasts', the English narrator receives the dubious honour of being appointed supervisor of two Scottish fence-builders: the bone idle Richie and his even lazier offsider Tam. Both Richie and Tam are live for the day - or at least a few pints at night - and never seem to have two pennies to rub together. The novel faithfully captures the sheer drudgery of repetitive and mundane physical labour, as well as the humour that can occur in such workplaces. The work of this team as they construct supposedly high-tensile fences comes under a great deal of scrutiny from management, clients and rivals - with darkly funny consequences. Suffice it to say that there are many laughs in this quirky novel that has resonances of classic English comedies such as 'Withnail and I' and 'The League of Gentlemen'.

Magnus Mills' debut novel would have been a possible 5-star contender for most of the journey. However, the novel becomes significantly blacker and less humourous in the final stages with no apparently good reason, ending most abruptly in an annoying and unsatisfying manner. Nevertheless, 'The Restraint of Beasts' is a highly entertaining, off-beat black comedy that accurately portrays the lifestyle of workers fenced in by economic forces.

How bizarre
What a great book! Everything is written with superb understatement to the point where you eventually come to think that every strange occurence in this book is completely normal.

There isn't much else you can say about it. All I would say is, don't expect an in-depth character study or a deeply moving novel. Relax before you read it, then laugh your head off when you do read it - I did.

A wonderfully plot-less book mirroring plot-less lives.
Some previous reviewers seem to have held it against the book that it `seems' to be plot-less, that it simply meanders. Well in one sense it does, but in doing that it's mirroring precisely the relatively `plot-less' lives of the two central characters, Tam and Richie.

I was taken straight back to my days as a student, labouring in the holidays building golf courses. I met, sadly, many `Tam and Richie's' - always skint (or, more often, in continual debt), always ready for an excuse to stop work, never looking any further forward than Friday night.

Think about it, it's a crushing life to look forward too - monotonous, back-breaking, with nothing to show for it at the end. Magnus Mills captures that hopelessness perfectly. The answers to most questions ARE "dunno", "nothing.." or "forgot".

Having just read another debut novel that was lauded for its `evocative and mesmeric' writing but which I found over-written and too clever-by-half I'd recommend "The Restraint of Beasts" every time. Writing clean, understated prose is a far harder job than its opposite. Call it a bonus that the book is also very dark and funny.