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King of the Badgers A Novel Philip Hensher 9780865478633 Books

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King of the Badgers A Novel Philip Hensher 9780865478633 Books

This is a satirical novel that takes aim at a number of elements in contemporary English society. The story is based on the absurd premise that life in rural Devon might be interesting, and shows that even when that appears to be true, the reality is just shallow and thin.

The novel is divided into three parts. The first centres around the disappearance of a young girl in the small town of Hanmouth. The incident shocks the community but also allows class snobbery to give a full airing to its tatty linen. The sad individuals obsessed with surveillance and security have a field day, insisting that no one is safe without more cameras to watch over all, and baying for the blood of any registered sex offender.

We are also introduced to Miranda and Kenyon. She is a self-important and bossy academic (plenty of models there) while he is a civil servant who has found a snug hideaway in the system, but their pretensions are pushing them deep into debt. Their daughter Hettie is clearly unhinged, a fact to which they are utterly oblivious.

It turns out that the missing girl was deliberately `kidnapped' by her mother's ex, but he is found murdered and now no one has a clue where the girl has gone. The most vociferous critics of the police are - for a time - subdued.

In the second part of the novel, Hensher turns his irreverent eye on fat, hairy gay men. The self-deprecating humour is a nice touch. David's parents have retired to Hanmouth and he has not fared well in their absence. He has a job writing mindless blurbs for mock-up novels to sell in the Chinese market, but you get the feeling that under the surface of nonsense there is a cri de coeur of romance trying to be heard. In order to save face with his parents, David convinces an Italian acquaintance, Mauro, to visit Hanmouth and pretend to be his boyfriend.

David's parents are trying ever so hard to fit in and have a budding friendship with Sam and Harry, a gay couple who have a domesticated life occasionally spiced up by orgies with other men of like build - as many as will fit into their living room. The other couple that emerges in this part of the novel is Hettie (Miranda and Kenyon's daughter) and Michael, the son of a visiting American academic. Hettie hasn't been interested in boys to date (she's 13), but is now doe-eyed for the transatlantic 15 year old.

David and Mauro attend a party put on by David's parents, but Sam and Harry arrive with a drugged-up and loud mechanic who shocks the guests. David and Mauro leave and head for the orgy at Sam and Harry's. The arrival of the other gay men in the streets of the small town outrages the busybodies of Neighbourhood Watch and gives them new cause for poking into other people's lives. The orgy provides some high comedy but David remains a sad figure. On the way back to London the next day he binges on burgers, snorts cocaine in the toilets of a lay-by and ends up dead.

The final third of the story sees a number of loose ends tied up, but the march of the nazis in Neighbourhood Watch continues and, despite resistance by some of the locals, you know that they will triumph. Their branded package of loathing and vindictiveness is too closely allied with the interests of modern policing to fail.

Hettie finds some resolution and forgiveness for her past sins, both real and imagined, but Michael seems to be getting the message that she's not the ideal partner. David's parents are deep in grief for the loss of their son and reach out to Mauro, still under the illusion that he was David's partner. However, they are mightily relieved when Mauro asks only a small token from them.

Miranda has pushed one too many causes one step too far and her university is now likely to fire her, though with a substantial severance package. Her husband Kenyon scores an extremely well paid job in the civil service, being the only one willing to take on the government's dirty work. Thus, in modern England the mediocre and undeserving reap their rich rewards.

The kidnapped girl is found by an observant man coming to empty the septic tank of a remote cottage, but the man who has been holding her takes off and we are left not knowing if he will ever face retribution for what he has done. In the closing scene, we see Sam and Harry reject the opportunity for a small orgy and settle for a quiet night in front of the telly instead. Ah, England.

This is a long novel and there are many other characters and sub-plots. At times it feels unwieldy, though the action keeps moving at a good clip. None of the characters is explored in depth (a pre-requisite of satire?) and the relationships between people, even the settled couples, display little substance. No one really seems very interested in anyone else, and no one here is very interesting.

Since 2005, Hensher has been an academic teaching English and creative writing, and the same period has marked a slow decline in his considerable ability to write compelling and complex prose. The novel consists of a very large number of short chapters, the divisions often unnecessary, and between the three parts he inserts two `Impromptus'. These are simply to remind us that there is an omniscient author at work (yes, that old trickery is still considered clever in academia) but they add no new dimension to our understanding, merely carrying the plot a bit further along. Hensher also indulges in some imagery that, while innovative, feels a little too contrived.

Some critics have compared this novel to the works of Kingsley Amis. Apparently they intended that as a compliment. Good satire is very hard to pull off. King of the Badgers doesn't have the subtlety and depth of Jonathan Coe's writing, but it is an amusing romp all the same and the story manages to skewer some pretensions of modern England in a satisfying way.


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King of the Badgers A Novel Philip Hensher 9780865478633 Books Reviews

Surely the reviewers are joking about this book. The story of the child's disappearance is just the part that gets you interested but it quickly becomes secondary to the introduction of so many other characters' stories. If you are someone who cannot imagine what homosexuals do to each other and are interested, then this is the book for you. I kept thinking that somewhere in that writhing morass there might be something that actually had some bearing on the story; no. Not even a smidgen. There is something about books that focus on a small town that I have always liked, but this is a mean-spirited look at everyone. Not surprisingly, the only ones who turn out to be likeable are the homosexual couple and the parents of a homosexual. The original dilemma of a missing child is quickly covered in a short chapter at the end and has so little to tie it to the rest of the book that you have almost forgotten to even care about it. I wish I could have read this review before I bought the book........
This book starts slow, draws to a mystery, then disappears into a cluster of unfulfilled homosexual relationships. I lost interest in the mystery. Too bad. What happened to China?
A sometimes amusing but sometimes tedious view of post-Thatcher, post-Blair Britain, with stock-but-interesting characters in a somewhat confused semi-mystery plot about a child's disappearance in a seaside tourist town, interrupted by a subplot about a frustrated middle-aged gay blurb writer. Should be of interest to enthusiasts of newish English fiction, but not in a class with the work of contemporaries like Barnes, Swift, Ishiguro, Byatt, McEwan and Lively, or some of the newcomers like Hollinghurst and Zadie Smith.
Philip Hensher's "King of the Badgers" is a challenging, enjoyable, deftly written exploration of class and punishment in contemporary Britain. Set in a smug-beyond-belief Southern English enclave of PC behaviour and middle-class correctness, it manages to deal with tragedy and yet - on several occasions - be both amusing and enlightening. Hensher has written a work that, incidentally, deals with gayness (among other things), yet avoids any possiblity of this ever being pigeonholed under the heading 'gay fiction'. It is not. This is a global take on what happens and the different perspectives that shift into the light, when the child of a working-class mother disappears without trace. The sifting within a community regarding who might be to blame, the way official forces are equally prey to misreading the evidence (on the basis of social prejudice), is rivettingly brought to light, and responses to class and origin are alarmingly predictable. As the various characters surrounding the subtly-handled drama of the missing child shift forward and are each illuminated in all their (frequent) inglory, the reader is also drawn along, absorbed at the manner in which ordinary town life settles once again over all kinds of atrocity, like a quiet pond on a breezeless day. The moral centre of the novel is herself young - an awkward, interesting teenager - and in the middle of all the posturing self-absorption of so many adults, she achieves a particular radiance towards the end of the narrative. Henscher's characters as portrayed within this very pluralistic and liberal community, are human and real, disappointing as well as sometimes delightful, full of the blithe egotism and self-delusion we all carry some of the time regarding ourselves. In the background is the recent burgeoning England of big borrowings and massive mortgages, and the first hints of what happens when the middle-class dream of excess begins to crumble. Most of all though, this is fiction worth attending to because the writer has worked through the layers of deception and hypocrisy, the automatic judging voices that swing unconsciously into action when tragedy strikes a family, and in so doing allows the reader to interrogate his or her own attitudes. The miracle is that this peculiarly moral novel is in no way moralising or sermonising. Brilliant.
This is a satirical novel that takes aim at a number of elements in contemporary English society. The story is based on the absurd premise that life in rural Devon might be interesting, and shows that even when that appears to be true, the reality is just shallow and thin.

The novel is divided into three parts. The first centres around the disappearance of a young girl in the small town of Hanmouth. The incident shocks the community but also allows class snobbery to give a full airing to its tatty linen. The sad individuals obsessed with surveillance and security have a field day, insisting that no one is safe without more cameras to watch over all, and baying for the blood of any registered sex offender.

We are also introduced to Miranda and Kenyon. She is a self-important and bossy academic (plenty of models there) while he is a civil servant who has found a snug hideaway in the system, but their pretensions are pushing them deep into debt. Their daughter Hettie is clearly unhinged, a fact to which they are utterly oblivious.

It turns out that the missing girl was deliberately `kidnapped' by her mother's ex, but he is found murdered and now no one has a clue where the girl has gone. The most vociferous critics of the police are - for a time - subdued.

In the second part of the novel, Hensher turns his irreverent eye on fat, hairy gay men. The self-deprecating humour is a nice touch. David's parents have retired to Hanmouth and he has not fared well in their absence. He has a job writing mindless blurbs for mock-up novels to sell in the Chinese market, but you get the feeling that under the surface of nonsense there is a cri de coeur of romance trying to be heard. In order to save face with his parents, David convinces an Italian acquaintance, Mauro, to visit Hanmouth and pretend to be his boyfriend.

David's parents are trying ever so hard to fit in and have a budding friendship with Sam and Harry, a gay couple who have a domesticated life occasionally spiced up by orgies with other men of like build - as many as will fit into their living room. The other couple that emerges in this part of the novel is Hettie (Miranda and Kenyon's daughter) and Michael, the son of a visiting American academic. Hettie hasn't been interested in boys to date (she's 13), but is now doe-eyed for the transatlantic 15 year old.

David and Mauro attend a party put on by David's parents, but Sam and Harry arrive with a drugged-up and loud mechanic who shocks the guests. David and Mauro leave and head for the orgy at Sam and Harry's. The arrival of the other gay men in the streets of the small town outrages the busybodies of Neighbourhood Watch and gives them new cause for poking into other people's lives. The orgy provides some high comedy but David remains a sad figure. On the way back to London the next day he binges on burgers, snorts cocaine in the toilets of a lay-by and ends up dead.

The final third of the story sees a number of loose ends tied up, but the march of the nazis in Neighbourhood Watch continues and, despite resistance by some of the locals, you know that they will triumph. Their branded package of loathing and vindictiveness is too closely allied with the interests of modern policing to fail.

Hettie finds some resolution and forgiveness for her past sins, both real and imagined, but Michael seems to be getting the message that she's not the ideal partner. David's parents are deep in grief for the loss of their son and reach out to Mauro, still under the illusion that he was David's partner. However, they are mightily relieved when Mauro asks only a small token from them.

Miranda has pushed one too many causes one step too far and her university is now likely to fire her, though with a substantial severance package. Her husband Kenyon scores an extremely well paid job in the civil service, being the only one willing to take on the government's dirty work. Thus, in modern England the mediocre and undeserving reap their rich rewards.

The kidnapped girl is found by an observant man coming to empty the septic tank of a remote cottage, but the man who has been holding her takes off and we are left not knowing if he will ever face retribution for what he has done. In the closing scene, we see Sam and Harry reject the opportunity for a small orgy and settle for a quiet night in front of the telly instead. Ah, England.

This is a long novel and there are many other characters and sub-plots. At times it feels unwieldy, though the action keeps moving at a good clip. None of the characters is explored in depth (a pre-requisite of satire?) and the relationships between people, even the settled couples, display little substance. No one really seems very interested in anyone else, and no one here is very interesting.

Since 2005, Hensher has been an academic teaching English and creative writing, and the same period has marked a slow decline in his considerable ability to write compelling and complex prose. The novel consists of a very large number of short chapters, the divisions often unnecessary, and between the three parts he inserts two `Impromptus'. These are simply to remind us that there is an omniscient author at work (yes, that old trickery is still considered clever in academia) but they add no new dimension to our understanding, merely carrying the plot a bit further along. Hensher also indulges in some imagery that, while innovative, feels a little too contrived.

Some critics have compared this novel to the works of Kingsley Amis. Apparently they intended that as a compliment. Good satire is very hard to pull off. King of the Badgers doesn't have the subtlety and depth of Jonathan Coe's writing, but it is an amusing romp all the same and the story manages to skewer some pretensions of modern England in a satisfying way.