Gill Hornby
The Bawdy Bunch
Mark Haddon’s first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, was, you remember, a publisher’s dream. Not only did it win pretty much every award going, it also pulled off that remarkable – and highly lucrative – feat of straddling two markets. A charming insight into the mind of a fifteen-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome, it was a huge hit with both adults and children alike. So the first question to be asked about his second novel is: Can he do it again? One has to read less than a third of A Spot of Bother to answer: He hasn’t even tried.
It will be interesting to see how this book is marketed. There is a public duty to prevent any twelve-year-old fans of A Curious Incident… from spending their book-tokens on this one. If they are not, these days, worried about a bit of masturbation,
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From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
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Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553