Book description
Recently widowed and increasingly lonely, Roswell Clark's life had
arrived at the point when he felt he needed a tattoo. His ideal image
was that of a bat featured on an eighteenth-century bowl in the Victoria
and Albert Museum, but strangely, on a visit to the museum, he
encountered a woman called Sarah Varley, who was clearly compelled by
the same bat. What did it mean? Sarah dealt in antiques and Roswell soon
ran into her stalls in Chelsea and Covent Garden. His calling, which
grew out of an obsession with crash-test dummies, was a bit harder to
explain. It led from the invention of a popular children's toy to
lucrative commissions from a Parisian sybarite for wooden working models
with very adult moving parts. Both Roswell and Sarah had lost their
spouses and were still grieving in their different ways. And then Christ
started putting a hand in - literally - when a fragment of an ancient
crucifix fetched up in one of Sarah's antique lots. Between some
compulsion conveyed by this hand and Sarah's natural urge to make
improvements in people, Roswell's work took a surprising new turn...
Russell Hoban's delicious new novel combines much about art -
traditional and conceptual - with new angles on Christ, crash-test
dummies, antiques, pornography and a charming tale of romance.
'Neither science fiction nor fantasy but with elements of both, Hoban's
11th novel is weird, humorous, playful and very enjoyable' Daily Mail
'His meditations seem to stem from real creative rapture, and his
visionary interpretations are a joy to explore' The Times Recently
widowed and increasingly lonely, Roswell Clark's life had arrived at the
point when he felt he needed a tattoo. His ideal image was that of a bat
featured on an eighteenth-century bowl in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, but strangely, on a visit to the museum, he encountered a woman
called Sarah Varley, who was clearly compelled by the same bat. What did
it mean? Sarah dealt in antiques and Roswell soon ran into her stalls in
Chelsea and Covent Garden. His calling, which grew out of an obsession
with crash-test dummies, was a bit harder to explain. It led from the
invention of a popular children's toy to lucrative commissions from a
Parisian sybarite for wooden working models with very adult moving
parts. Both Roswell and Sarah had lost their spouses and were still
grieving in their different ways. And then Christ started putting a hand
in - literally - when a fragment of an ancient crucifix fetched up in
one of Sarah's antique lots. Between some compulsion conveyed by this
hand and Sarah's natural urge to make improvements in people, Roswell's
work took a surprising new turn... Russell Hoban's delicious new novel
combines much about art - traditional and conceptual - with new angles
on Christ, crash-test dummies, antiques, pornography and a charming tale
of romance.
