Christopher Wood
Did She Have Hairy Palms?
The Woman Who Talked to Herself
By A L Barker
Hutchinson 186pp £11.95
This new book by A L Barker is ceaselessly entertaining and brimming with acute insights into a multiplicity of lives and characters. Described by the authoress as ‘an articulated novel’ it combines the genres of novel and short story (Barker has published nearly as many volumes of stories as novels) to produce a sparklingly inventive hybrid.
Ostensibly a recollection by professional story-teller Winifred Appleton, who has achieved the unlikely feat for a fiction-pedlar of packing out Wembley Stadium, the narrative is diversified through a series of fantasies provoked by incidents from Winifred’s life. A chance meeting or chance mention will turn her prismatic mind to new stories, many of which are self-contained vignettes of dazzling originality.
One of the most inspired digressions is sparked off by the appearance on Winifred’s doorstep of a group of Jehovah’s witnesses, one of whom, a ‘yellow man’ who ‘tried to kick his own feet from under him’ happens to be called George. George, then, is the name given to Winifred’s next character, a hapless, friendless municipal parks worker, who has decided that in order to become somebody he should commit murder. Around his house he comes across helpful notes addressed to himself: ‘There’s always Mrs Snagsby’ (his next-door neighbour), suggests the first. When George fails to dispatch his neighbour, a more frustrated communication appears: ‘There are twenty-thousand people in this borough, half of them malefactors.’ And finally, on a note of awful poignancy, ‘There’s always you.’
George is by no means alone in suffering from delusions. The memory of Winifred’s honeymoon in the German Alps with husband Arthur gives rise to the tale of guest-house proprietress Mrs McSweeny and her crazed companion Murdo, ‘carrying his belief like a torch, burning but unconsumed’; Murdo, from within his
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
It is a triumph @arthistorynews and my review @Lit_Review is here!
In just thirteen years, George Villiers rose from plain squire to become the only duke in England and the most powerful politician in the land. Does a new biography finally unravel the secrets of his success?
John Adamson investigates.
John Adamson - Love Island with Ruffs
John Adamson: Love Island with Ruffs - The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
literaryreview.co.uk
During the 1930s, Winston Churchill retired to Chartwell, his Tudor-style country house in Kent, where he plotted a return to power.
Richard Vinen asks whether it’s time to rename the decade long regarded as Churchill’s ‘wilderness years’.
Richard Vinen - Croquet & Conspiracy
Richard Vinen: Croquet & Conspiracy - Churchill’s Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm by Katherine Carter
literaryreview.co.uk