If you're familiar with the work of playwright and director Mike Leigh, and specifically the marvellously, comically grotesque characters in pieces like Abigail's Party and Nuts in May, then you'll know what I mean when I say that Louise Dean's novel The Old Romantic
Set on the south coast of England in and around Hastings and Rye, it concerns a fractured family, the Goodyews, whose 'patriarch', Ken, has death on his mind. Approaching eighty, and 'volunteering' at the local funeral parlour, Ken wants things in order now that he thinks his end is nigh. Long since divorced from Pearl, the mother of his two sons, Ken aims to die with his kin around him, but he hasn't seen Pearl for years, his elder son Nick broke ties with his parents when he went to Cambridge, became a lawyer and re-invented himself as a member of the middle class, and a further spoke in the wheel is Ken's current wife June, with her obsession with bus routes and bargains to be found at Lidl.
This is a very sharp comedy of manners - bad manners, as I've seen it described - and parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but while it won't appeal to everyone's taste, Louise Dean has done a terrific job on the subject of class, ageing and family dynamics, and with her keen ear for dialogue, her social observation and her cringe-making characters, it's a finely crafted blend of the comic and the uncomfortably realistic!
This sounds right up my street! Oh, dear ... I've just ordered two books from Amazon ... it will have to be on the Wanted List for a while ...
Posted by: Margaret Powling | 13 January 2011 at 02:31 PM
I weakened. I gave in. I have ordered it. Oh dear ...
Posted by: Margaret Powling | 13 January 2011 at 02:35 PM
I am clearly bad for your bank balance, Margaret!
Posted by: Cornflower | 13 January 2011 at 09:12 PM
I like your mention of realistic and bad manners!this goes into my search documents!
Posted by: Mystica | 14 January 2011 at 01:49 AM
I am so intrigued by your description of this book, it's location is very familar to me being a few miles from home. Hastings and Rye are two completely different towns, both in the same parlimentary constituency yet poles apart in many different ways. Definately one for the wanted list.
Posted by: Fran H-B | 14 January 2011 at 09:48 PM
Louise Dean obviously knows the area extremely well as she describes the places in such detail, a stranger could find their way around by reading the book!
Posted by: Cornflower | 14 January 2011 at 10:10 PM
I have only driven through Hastings but have stayed in Rye and love this town (aka Tilling from the books by Benson on Mapp & Lucia.) Best of all, I love the walk by the Royal Military Canal on a fine spring day, with frogs croaking in a stream, sheep grazing on the grass that is so finely chomped by them, it looks more like a garden than fields, and miles of hawthorne blossom, like snow in spring.
Posted by: Margaret Powling | 15 January 2011 at 08:28 PM
I fear Mapp and Lucia would take a dim view of the characters in this novel - they might call them 'quaint', perhaps!
Posted by: Cornflower | 15 January 2011 at 09:08 PM
Thank you for your kind comments. I hope you enjoy the book
warmly
Louise (Dean)
Posted by: [email protected] | 30 March 2011 at 09:10 PM
Thankyou, Louise, I enjoyed it greatly!
Posted by: Cornflower | 30 March 2011 at 09:24 PM