Product Description

And out of the Darkwood Mr Toppit comes, and he comes not for you, or for me, but for all of us... When the author of The Hayseed Chronicles, Arthur Hayman, is mown down by a concrete truck in Soho, his legacy passes to his widow, Martha, and her children - the fragile Rachel, and Luke, reluctantly immortalised as Luke Hayseed, the central character of his father's books. But others want their share, particularly Laurie, who has a mysterious agenda of her own that changes all their lives. For buried deep in the books lie secrets which threaten to be revealed as the family begins to crumble under the heavy burden of their inheritance. Spanning several decades, from the heyday of the British film industry after the war to the cut-throat world of show business in Los Angeles, Mr Toppit is a riveting tale of the unexpected effects of sudden fame and fortune. Not since Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! has a novel managed to capture a family and a society to such wonderfully funny and painful effect.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32915 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'The plot's a cracker ... Elton has an arch wit, an engaging style and a sense of invention that recalls Jonathan Coe' Evening Standard 'Poignant and engaging' Mail on Sunday 'Narrated with wit and vigor. Elton is a brilliant observer' Vogue

Penguin

Q & A with Charles Elton, Author of Mr Toppit

Where did the idea for Mr Toppit first come from?

When I was a literary agent, I worked with the Estate of A.A.Milne and had always been struck by the level of unwanted fame that was foisted on his son Christopher Robin Milne by being a character in Winnie The Pooh. He - and the books - were a global phenomenon in the 1920's and I wondered what would happen today when the outlets of fame - movies, TV, merchandising, the internet - are so much more numerous than they were. That was the only idea I started with. Everything else came as I wrote.

It took you a long time to write – why was this?

The book took an embarrassingly long time to write - 15 years. You can put that down to laziness, or - if you're generous - the fact that I was a TV producer with a very busy life. I didn't have a deadline and in a strange way I wasn't writing it to be published - I just wanted to see if I could do it. It was my hobby, like a train set in the attic that I could retreat to when I had time.

Did it change a lot during that time?

I wrote so slowly that I didn't need to do a lot of rewriting. I never planned anything or made notes. Most of the best things in the book came as I went along. I cut about 25000 words from the first half, not plot - just things I had overwritten. The second half is more or less unchanged from when I first wrote it.

The Hayseed Chronicles feel very real; could you see a day when these might actually be written and published?

Some people have thought that the 'Hayseed' excerpts in the book are like the tip of the iceberg and that I wrote much more. In fact, the bits in my book are all there ever were. I thought that the less I put in, the more enigmatic it would be. I suppose it's in my head somewhere - as an exercise I wrote jacket copy for the five Hayseed books, and found that there was more of a plot than I thought. Luke Hayseed's mother turns out to be in league with Mr Toppit.

What are you working on now?

I'm writing another book about a dysfunctional family - this time a strange dynasty of folk singers and political activists. I've written about 20000 words and have no idea what happens next.

About the Author
Charles Elton lives in London and Somerset with his two children. This is his first novel.

Customer Reviews

Flat
I was so disappointed with this book. I was really looking forward to a great read. From the blurb it sounded like everything I could want in a storyline but sadly, it fell flat for me. It just meandered along and didn't hold my interest at all. I didn't care about the characters or whatever secrets they were going to uncover - which in the end didn't turn out to be suprising or paricularly dark. In fact, the only saving grace for this book was the beautiful artwork on the cover.

Is that it then?
I won't bother to summarise the plot since other reviewers have already done that. The descriptions in this book are very good - the London Streets, the Hayman's house, the Darkwood, Laurie's home - he brings them all to life very well. Unfortunately most of the characters, whilst they're easy to picture, aren't interesting enough to make me want to spend time with them. The only character I felt any connection to was Laurie - and she seems to undergo a massive personality change towards the end of the book. This is supposed to be the story of family secrets, but the secrets aren't dark enough to carry the book (they're not even particularly secret, since they're easy enough to guess long before the end). I reached the last pages and thought 'is that it then?'.

Not Quite What I Expected
The original premise of this book intrigued me, and I found the hardback cover (Mr. Toppit on the dust jacket, with the Hayseed Chronicles underneath) a gorgeous idea. Unfortunately it did seem to be the best bit of the book.

After a promising start, I must admit this book became a bit of a gruelling read for me. I didn't connect with any of the characters, starting with the main narrator: Luke Hayman. Luke's narration is detached, lack-lustre and disinterested. He doesn't speak much, he just watches, but he seems to miss all the vital points. Or he doesn't see them as important. Since he is the main voice in the book, I felt this was quite a big factor in why the overall story didn't work for me.

The character of Laurie just irritated me. I wanted someone to tell her to go away, or ask why she felt she had a right to be there, or do this, but everyone just accepted her. Rachel and Martha were vague figures who never truly came into focus, except in cliches - drug-taking, troubled daughter; unfaithful, disappointed wife. I constantly felt as if there was a deeper story here (something about Jordan, perhaps) but it never quite arrived.

As for the Hayseed Chronicles themselves, the characters of Luke Hayseed and Mr Toppit, to be honest I felt the connection was hazy and feeble. It certainly didn't cause Rachel's problems (though early on when Luke remarks that Rachel was never in the books, as if she didn't exist I hoped that would go somewhere. It never truly did, except as a very tenuous reason for why Rachel was so desperate for attention. But that could just as easily have been inherited from Martha), which were in existence before Arthur's death, and therefore predated Laurie's interference and the success of the books. In fact, for something supposed to be at the heart of the family breakdown, the books drift in and out and never make a point.

This book started off well, drifted, then steadily petered out, coming to an end of nothingness. Nothing was resolved, nothing was revealed, it just ended at a point that could have occurred almost anywhere else in the story.

I expected more, wanted there to be more, but it sadly didn't quite deliver. Which is a shame, because no matter how much I disliked the characters, I did stick with it to the end. There's potential here, I just don't feel it was reached this time around.