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dave_holwill's review against another edition
3.0
I liked the style, the mostly unlikeable characters and snarky commentary.
I enjoyed the character study of middle-class incomers in Devon.
I was sad that the plot hinted at in the blurb was abandoned much sooner than expected.
I was even more sad that the author had clearly never tried to get around North Devon by train before. The London geography is spot on, and the fictional town of Hanmouth is just fine, but turning Barnstaple into a city and giving Bideford back its long closed station and a brand new Sainsburys grates on anyone who actually lives in North Devon.
I know it's a small thing, but go fictional on your towns and don't upset the locals by rubbing their awful transport links in their faces.
Other than that gripe, the characters are wonderfully drawn, and fantastically awful in a good way. I recognise the town of Hanmouth, and could make a few guesses as to where it is intended to be.
I enjoyed the character study of middle-class incomers in Devon.
I was sad that the plot hinted at in the blurb was abandoned much sooner than expected.
I was even more sad that the author had clearly never tried to get around North Devon by train before. The London geography is spot on, and the fictional town of Hanmouth is just fine, but turning Barnstaple into a city and giving Bideford back its long closed station and a brand new Sainsburys grates on anyone who actually lives in North Devon.
I know it's a small thing, but go fictional on your towns and don't upset the locals by rubbing their awful transport links in their faces.
Other than that gripe, the characters are wonderfully drawn, and fantastically awful in a good way. I recognise the town of Hanmouth, and could make a few guesses as to where it is intended to be.
nonna7's review against another edition
5.0
To say that "King of the Badgers" is a strange book, is putting it mildly. I learned about the book by accident while reading the status of one of my favorite authors. She said that Hensher had made a disparaging statement about "thrillers." I guess it's a matter of taste. I like a good crime novel myself, but I do like to indulge in good literature also.
This book was strange but so well-written, I couldn't put it down. Hensher doesn't like all of the CCTV cameras that are all over Britain. I confess I wouldn't like them either although I must admit that if you are in a crime-ridden area or a large city, you might feel safer.
The book starts out with the kidnapping of a little girl. However, you really don't have a whole lot of empathy for the little girl (who is totally unappealing) or the slatternly mother or awful stepfather. She lives in a working class suburb of a small Devon town that has become very upscale in the last few years. It is on the water, there are lovely little fishermens' cottages now transformed into upscale residences, new flats that have obstructed the views of previous inhabitants, upscale shopping including a cheese shop run by a gay man named Sam and his partner, Harry, also known as "Lord-What-A-Waste."
I don't think Henshaw likes anyone. He has equal disdain for the working class, the middle class and the upper class it seems. We meet the creepy head of the neighborhood watch, appropriately named John Calvin. In addition there is the Brigadier and Billa, an elderly couple, Miranda (she's a marvel) and Kenyon, her husband. Miranda runs the monthly book club with an iron hand. No light reading here when Miranda has anything to do with it. She teaches English literature at a second rate college and is thrilled to have one non-white student.
Kenyon is a Dept of the Treasury employee on indefinite loan to an Aids in Africa project. He spends most of his time in London and one day of that workweek in the arms of his lover who happens to be the father of Miranda's one non-white student. Miranda and Kenyon have a teenage daughter who still plays with dolls that have names like "Child Pornographer" and "Slightly Jewish."
Harry (Lord-What-A-Waste) and Sam consider themselves husband and husband although they do get together with the Bears, a group of bearded and mostly overweight gay men. With the help of drugs and alcohol they have a private orgy every few months.
Catherine & Alec are a retired couple who moved to the town after visiting Alec's former secretary and her husband who live in a nearby town. They buy one of the flats that obstruct other people's views. Their son, David, is visiting. He is fat, unstylish and gay and is bringing along an Italian gigolo named Mauro, passing him off as his boyfriend.
Catherine invites some of the neighbors to meet her son and his "partner." The neighbors come more out of obligation, but find they are having a nice time after all. Winding its' way through the book - a lot in the beginning, then a little at the end - is the missing child. This is one of those somewhat dry but witty books. At the very beginning, the author describes a bee hive: "It looked like a miniature tongue and groove New England lunatic asylum." How can you not want to read more?
This book was strange but so well-written, I couldn't put it down. Hensher doesn't like all of the CCTV cameras that are all over Britain. I confess I wouldn't like them either although I must admit that if you are in a crime-ridden area or a large city, you might feel safer.
The book starts out with the kidnapping of a little girl. However, you really don't have a whole lot of empathy for the little girl (who is totally unappealing) or the slatternly mother or awful stepfather. She lives in a working class suburb of a small Devon town that has become very upscale in the last few years. It is on the water, there are lovely little fishermens' cottages now transformed into upscale residences, new flats that have obstructed the views of previous inhabitants, upscale shopping including a cheese shop run by a gay man named Sam and his partner, Harry, also known as "Lord-What-A-Waste."
I don't think Henshaw likes anyone. He has equal disdain for the working class, the middle class and the upper class it seems. We meet the creepy head of the neighborhood watch, appropriately named John Calvin. In addition there is the Brigadier and Billa, an elderly couple, Miranda (she's a marvel) and Kenyon, her husband. Miranda runs the monthly book club with an iron hand. No light reading here when Miranda has anything to do with it. She teaches English literature at a second rate college and is thrilled to have one non-white student.
Kenyon is a Dept of the Treasury employee on indefinite loan to an Aids in Africa project. He spends most of his time in London and one day of that workweek in the arms of his lover who happens to be the father of Miranda's one non-white student. Miranda and Kenyon have a teenage daughter who still plays with dolls that have names like "Child Pornographer" and "Slightly Jewish."
Harry (Lord-What-A-Waste) and Sam consider themselves husband and husband although they do get together with the Bears, a group of bearded and mostly overweight gay men. With the help of drugs and alcohol they have a private orgy every few months.
Catherine & Alec are a retired couple who moved to the town after visiting Alec's former secretary and her husband who live in a nearby town. They buy one of the flats that obstruct other people's views. Their son, David, is visiting. He is fat, unstylish and gay and is bringing along an Italian gigolo named Mauro, passing him off as his boyfriend.
Catherine invites some of the neighbors to meet her son and his "partner." The neighbors come more out of obligation, but find they are having a nice time after all. Winding its' way through the book - a lot in the beginning, then a little at the end - is the missing child. This is one of those somewhat dry but witty books. At the very beginning, the author describes a bee hive: "It looked like a miniature tongue and groove New England lunatic asylum." How can you not want to read more?
emmkayt's review against another edition
2.0
I read Hensher's [b:The Northern Clemency|2927460|The Northern Clemency|Philip Hensher|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328158427s/2927460.jpg|2954855] a few years ago and thought it was excellent, although I can't remember the plot at this point. Partway through King of the Badgers, I looked back at my review of the earlier book and was surprised to see I had described it enthusiastically as "compassionate," given that compassion for his characters seems to be exactly what is missing from Badgers. A long, detailed novel about the inhabitants of an English town, loosely structured around the mysterious disappearance of a little girl, it has lots of funny, trenchant observations, but everyone in it is a caricature, and an unpleasant one at that, often drawing deeply on expected stereotypes, especially around class. Consequently, the experience of reading it was also quite unpleasant, even when a turn of phrase or an observation made me laugh or nod.
hogwash1's review against another edition
4.0
Strange book, strange in a good way, ostensibly about a kidnapped girl but which soon loses track of that element of the plot and veers from thriller into an examination of the lives of the people in the girl's little town who gossip about her and then drop her as a topic of discussion, just as the book does, and thus we, like the townspeople, are implicated in our prurient fascination with her story and then the almost equally prurient look into the lives of the other characters. It continually baffled my expectations, but the baffling was a major part of the charm.
pugglebert's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
frickative's review
4.0
King of the Badgers is another book club offering that I'd probably never have picked up of my own accord - but that's by no means a bad thing. It's nice to have something completely out of my usual wheelhouse, and end up enjoying it so much that it's hard to put down on holiday.
Ostensibly centered on the disappearance of an eight-year-old from a less desirable suburb of a stuck-up town, King of the Badgers is really the story of a community. Told in bursts and fleeting snatches from a multitude of views, it's a scathing examination of middle class life and modern follies. (With definite shades of The Casual Vacancy, but a deal more panache.)
The characters are almost uniformly varying shades of loathsome, but there are still some genuinely moving beats, be they a distressing bereavement, sexual assault, or, well, a down-on-his-luck chap at his first gay orgy.
Not all storylines are satisfyingly fleshed out, particularly those of an eccentric artist and her flourishing friendship with a recent widow, which showed promise. On the whole though, King of the Badgers was a riveting read, and I'd happily read more by Hensher in future.
[Review originally published on my blog at Line After Line].
Ostensibly centered on the disappearance of an eight-year-old from a less desirable suburb of a stuck-up town, King of the Badgers is really the story of a community. Told in bursts and fleeting snatches from a multitude of views, it's a scathing examination of middle class life and modern follies. (With definite shades of The Casual Vacancy, but a deal more panache.)
The characters are almost uniformly varying shades of loathsome, but there are still some genuinely moving beats, be they a distressing bereavement, sexual assault, or, well, a down-on-his-luck chap at his first gay orgy.
Not all storylines are satisfyingly fleshed out, particularly those of an eccentric artist and her flourishing friendship with a recent widow, which showed promise. On the whole though, King of the Badgers was a riveting read, and I'd happily read more by Hensher in future.
[Review originally published on my blog at Line After Line].
hcq's review
4.0
Really well written, really interesting.
I found this through Goodreads: It was listed under the “readers also enjoyed” tag for [a:Edward St. Aubyn|23194|Edward St. Aubyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1405245514p2/23194.jpg]'s Patrick Melrose books, and I love those, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I'm glad I did.
I can see why they made the connection. It’s not as glitteringly clever, nor as cruel, but not much is. Also, to be fair, the authors are doing different things: St. Aubyn was focused on one family, while Hensher was constructing a broader picture, of a English seaside town.
That town also has its scandal—a missing child—but that’s just the skeleton of the story. The body of it is built up bit by bit, as the reader meets and gets to know quite a few people in the town. Eventually they start to connect, and the larger pattern comes into view. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
It’s also pretty darn funny, in places.
Hensher has a marvelously clear, sharp approach to classic themes, like the snobbery of the folks in the nice houses versus the estates, and also to more modern ones, from the creeping omnipresence of police cameras to the social arrangements involved in gay sex parties. His take on the modern academic scene (for example, dissolving the chemistry department to pay for more gardeners, to impress prospective students’ parents) is ruefully entertaining while also horrifically accurate.
I want to read more by this guy.
I found this through Goodreads: It was listed under the “readers also enjoyed” tag for [a:Edward St. Aubyn|23194|Edward St. Aubyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1405245514p2/23194.jpg]'s Patrick Melrose books, and I love those, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I'm glad I did.
I can see why they made the connection. It’s not as glitteringly clever, nor as cruel, but not much is. Also, to be fair, the authors are doing different things: St. Aubyn was focused on one family, while Hensher was constructing a broader picture, of a English seaside town.
That town also has its scandal—a missing child—but that’s just the skeleton of the story. The body of it is built up bit by bit, as the reader meets and gets to know quite a few people in the town. Eventually they start to connect, and the larger pattern comes into view. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
It’s also pretty darn funny, in places.
Hensher has a marvelously clear, sharp approach to classic themes, like the snobbery of the folks in the nice houses versus the estates, and also to more modern ones, from the creeping omnipresence of police cameras to the social arrangements involved in gay sex parties. His take on the modern academic scene (for example, dissolving the chemistry department to pay for more gardeners, to impress prospective students’ parents) is ruefully entertaining while also horrifically accurate.
I want to read more by this guy.
gerhard's review
5.0
This novel is one of those guilty pleasures one is reluctant to admitting how much you enjoyed it, as Philip Hensher spares no sacred cows, pieties, scruples or morals in this often grotesque and lurid, but extremely funny, skewering of middle-class society. Even the reader has his or her pretensions examined ruthlessly at one point ... and found to be sorely wanting, of course, as is everyone else under Hensher’s ferociously intelligent gaze.
In the fictional English town of Hanmouth, on the Bristol Channel, a young girl by the name of China goes missing, presumably kidnapped. That her family is from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak, is cause for much grievance among the upstanding citizens of Hanmouth proper, as the sadly unwarranted event gives undue publicity to the less than savoury aspects of this semi-rural idyll.
However, Hensher is little interested in solving the mystery of China’s disappearance, and simply uses this as a pretext to delve behind the curtains and closed doors of Hanmouth, to peer into its darkest nooks, crannies, desires, fears and hopes.
The irony of this, of course, is that the book is ostensibly about the invasion of privacy and the encroachment on human rights, as the stick-in-the-ass John Calvin of the local Neighbourhood Watch launches a one-horse campaign to increase the number of surveillance cameras in Hanmouth (‘If you are not doing anything wrong you will not be afraid to be caught out’, is the overall motto of this Big Brother benevolence).
Perhaps the highlight of the book is a bravua sequence contrasting a dinner party at one family, while a few houses down the local bears (fat, hairy and happy gay men) are getting down and dirty.
What I loved is that the book ends on such a sweetly domesticated note between the two lead gay characters, Sam and Lord What A Waste Harry, that the reader is totally wrong-footed by Hensher’s loving adoration for this doting couple, symbol of the true love, friendship and fealty that a proper community should be built upon.
In the fictional English town of Hanmouth, on the Bristol Channel, a young girl by the name of China goes missing, presumably kidnapped. That her family is from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak, is cause for much grievance among the upstanding citizens of Hanmouth proper, as the sadly unwarranted event gives undue publicity to the less than savoury aspects of this semi-rural idyll.
However, Hensher is little interested in solving the mystery of China’s disappearance, and simply uses this as a pretext to delve behind the curtains and closed doors of Hanmouth, to peer into its darkest nooks, crannies, desires, fears and hopes.
The irony of this, of course, is that the book is ostensibly about the invasion of privacy and the encroachment on human rights, as the stick-in-the-ass John Calvin of the local Neighbourhood Watch launches a one-horse campaign to increase the number of surveillance cameras in Hanmouth (‘If you are not doing anything wrong you will not be afraid to be caught out’, is the overall motto of this Big Brother benevolence).
Perhaps the highlight of the book is a bravua sequence contrasting a dinner party at one family, while a few houses down the local bears (fat, hairy and happy gay men) are getting down and dirty.
What I loved is that the book ends on such a sweetly domesticated note between the two lead gay characters, Sam and Lord What A Waste Harry, that the reader is totally wrong-footed by Hensher’s loving adoration for this doting couple, symbol of the true love, friendship and fealty that a proper community should be built upon.
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