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A review by gerhard
King of the Badgers by Philip Hensher
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.