Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #938632 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Customer Reviews

Sininster and compulsive - a must read!
This sinister novel is as compulsive as it is disturbing. Throughout McGrath's prose is spine-tinglingly evocative and yet his narrator is less than honest with the reader. Even after finishing the novel I am still not sure what is real and what is a figment of the narrator's imagination. Is Sir Hugo deliberately lying to the reader to hide his guilt or does he honestly believe that the servile new butler, Fledge, is capable of such wickedness? Surprisingly this chilling novel is filled with humour which lies in the brilliant characterisation within the novel and in the discrepancy between what Sir Hugo is telling us and what we can imagine is actually happening. Sir Hugo's rendering of the relationship between himself and Sidney Giblet's mother, who is determined to find out the truth about what happened to her son, is superb. A must read!

Did The Butler Really Do It ??
After reading the excellent Asylum in about 4 days for an Essex book talk group I was so impressed with McGrath's style of writing that I thought I'd try another McGrath book I tried Grotesque , I got through this in just a couple of days being so compulsive . For Grotesque McGrath shows us a very humorous side to his writing , a side I never encountered in any of his other novels I read. This is a darkly disturbing gothic story ,laced with horror, murder mystery black humour and mind games. In this story Things at the Gothic Crook Hall household take an unexpected slide due to the arrival of deviously seductive butler Fledge.Sir Hugo gives the reader his viewpoint as he lays in a wheelchair parlysed with a stroke from his view he tells the story of the fall of Crook Hall which involves a savage murder ,and how the devious Fledge destroys his life as he takes over Crook Hall. As usual McGrath has created sharp characters from the cocky Fledge who distastefully commands the story Sir Hugo the palaeonologist, whose abandoned his wife and family for his affair with dinosaur bones. Fledges lifeless wife Doris the drinker, Harriet Sir Hugo's wife, Cleo his daughter , Sidney Cleo's fiance and Sidney's mother who Sir Hugo describes as being a battle axe.Grotesque's one hell of a read .Only problem I found was it's a very short book more of a novella at less than 200 pages . I'm just suprised that McGraths books are not as critically acclaimed as they deserve to be,and Grotesque is at McGraths highest standard of strong prose tough plot perfect!