Book description
After the success of The Northern Clemency, shortlisted for the 2008
Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher brings us another slice of contemporary
life, this time the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of a small
English town.
After the success of The Mulberry Empire and The Northern Clemency,
which was short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher
brings us the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of the small
English town of Handsmouth.
Usually a quiet and undisturbed place situated on an estuary,
Handsmouth becomes the centre of national attention when an
eight-year-old girl vanishes. The town fills with journalists and
television crews, who latch onto the public's fearful suspicions that
the missing girl, the daughter of one of the town's working-class
families, was abducted.
This tragic event serves to expose the range of segregated existences
in the town, as spectrums of class, wealth and lifestyle are blurred in
the investigation. Behind Handsmouth's closed doors and pastoral façade
the extraordinary individual lives of the community are exposed. The
undisclosed passions of a quiet international aid worker are set against
his wife, a woman whose astonishing aptitude for intellectual pursuits,
such as piano-playing and elaborate cooking, makes her seem a paragon of
virtue to the outside world. A recently-widowed old woman tells a story
that details her late discovery of sexual gratification. And the Bears -
middle-aged, fat, hairy gay men, given to promiscuity and some drug
abuse - have a party.
As the search for the missing girl elevates, the case enables a
self-appointed authority figure to present the case for increased
surveillance, and, as old notions of privacy begin to crack, private
lives seep into the public well of knowledge.
Handsmouth is a powerful study of the vital importance of
individuality, the increasingly intrusive hand of political powers and
the unyielding strength of Nature against the worst excesses of human
behaviour. 'Deftly drawn novel' Independent on Sunday
'An acutely observed social satire. Hensher's fluid, witty prose is
equally convincing in evoking uptight middle-aged dinner parties or gay
orgies' Sunday Telegraph Philip Hensher is a columnist for the
Independent, arts critic for the Spectator and a Granta Best of Young
British novelist. He has written seven novels, including The Mulberry
Empire, King of the Badgers and the Booker-shortlisted The Northern
Clemency, and one collection of short stories. He lives in South London
and Geneva.
