And I'm so glad I did. Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2010. “The Northern Clemency” is a rare British example of a novel about middle-class suburban life; novels on this theme appear to be commoner in America. The Northern Clemency begins in 1974, in a Sheffield of smoking chimneys and steaming slagheaps (though these things are never actually described), and winds up in 1996, by … I went into this book thinking that I might find it fabulous, given some of the reviews and the subject matter. Hensher seems to be obsessed with filllng his pages with a cast of thousands. Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video! Dear Lord, this book felt long. The Northern Clemency . Disappointingly boring. I liked all the "Briticisms". "I wouldn't say all," Mrs. Arbuthnot said. July 12, 2012 Philip Hensher’s 'Scenes From Early Life' What makes this novel/memoir set in war-torn Bangladesh special? . Hensher was born in South London, although he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Sheffield, attending Tapton School. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. There was a great deal of humour and knowing about British politics and social issues makes the book much richer than if the reader is unfamiliar with same. One gets wrapped up in the characters' everyday problems so that the 738 pages seem to fly by. by Philip Hensher. In this case, the novel centers around two British suburban families --- Malcolm and Katharine Glover, their children Daniel, Jane, and Tim and the Sellers family across the street, consisting of Bernie, Alice, Sandra, and Francis. It's certainly Tolstoyan in size, weighing in at a hefty 736 pages, but it lacked the historical sweep of Tolstoy. A brilliant book. Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2015, Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2009. Tolstoy sets the minutiae of his characters' lives in the wider. April 1st 2008 I’ve seen reviewers describe these as “dysfunctional” families, but one of the points o. Or, rather, they are very good at a particular type of novel (what F.R. There are too many characters to become truly connected to any of them, too little activity to define anything but the broadest form of plot and, ultimately, no central perspective. It's also ripping good social history. I was disappointed in the degree to which time and place were actually conveyed. Well, this is a long, winding narrative filled with characters who, at best, are mostly only semi-likeable. Early in his career he worked as a clerk in the House of Commons, from which he was fired over the content of an interview he gave to a gay magazine. I’ve seen reviewers describe these as “dysfunctional” families, but one of the points of this work is presumably to illustrate that every family defies any norm or prescribed standard. Take two random families living on the same street and write a novel spanning 20 years that chronicles their lives and fortunes and you have Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency. One word to sum up this behemoth of a book is a chore. 'The Northern Clemency" is a 600-page multigenerational epic set in the northern English city of Sheffield, famous for steel, coal mines and the retrenched male … This remarkable novel has garnered widespread critical acclaim and was honored as a Man Booker Prize Finalist, making it a true discovery for book clubs. Hensher was born in South London, although he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Sheffield, attending Tapton School. At any rate, Hensher's book seems part of a little renaissance of finely tuned, quietly brilliant British novels of manners (whose parents would be, say, Zadie Smith's On Beauty and Alan Hollinghurst's Line of Beauty). (Richard Yates, John Cheever, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates are all American chroniclers of suburbia who come to mind). EMBED. Didn' t even realised I'd finished it, a nothing of a book! Of the many ways to categorize and parse fiction, the division between "character-driven" and "plot-driven" is a worthwhile (and limited) as any. This is a BIG book--600 pages long--and it's a sweeping story that primarily centers around two generations of two families. I will concede that the author effectively paints the Thatcherite/miner strike mood of the time. I asked the clerk at my favorite bookstore if she could recommend something, and she walked out with, The Northern Clemency tells the 25-year story of two families living in suburban Sheffield, England, from the day in 1974 when the Sellers move from London to the house across the street from the Glovers, who just happen to be in the middle of a domestic crisis. There'd been a few unsuccessful attempts to start it, but, for some reason, I couldn't get past the opening scene. A great read! Good enough to read over 700 pages but nowhere near as good as I thought it was going to be. Hensher’s eye for detail is precise and his touch sure. But it will be the particular crises of ten-year-old Tim Glover—set off by two seemingly inconsequential but ultimately indelible acts of cruelty—that will erupt, full-blown, two decades later in a shocking conclusion. It also gives a true insight into the lives of the coal miners and the social conditions that surrounded the decline of the mines, and the onset of the Thatcher era. The details were never extraneous, but served to locate me completely in the world being represented. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. Names appear from nowhere with no connection to the rest of the story. Awards: Kindle Book. Chapter One So the garden of number eighty-four is nothing more than a sort of playground for all the kids of the neighbourhood?" I think one difference was the time span of this book - because the book spans many years I sometimes felt like the story had to be told as a series of vignettes. Hensher doesn't do any of that -- he focuses (very well) on the characters' daily lives, and the way they grow and change while remaining recognisably the same people. A rambling storyline at times grippingly told, at times told so hurriedly perhaps the author had places to get to. We move through early childhood to mature adulthood of several of the characters, and although it's a little tough sometimes to keep the names straight, it is possible with a little bit of extra attention. The story is nearly epic in scale - it follows the lives of several townspeople who live in an industrial village in Northern England during the 70s and the 80s. It is quite long and is broken up into books rather than chapters. … I'm so glad I did. That attitude usually seems to put a book——or a movie, or a person——at a disadvantage because so much is expected. The Northern Clemency. Empathy, argues Amitav Ghosh. Told in a series of chronologically brief (but syntactically interminable) episodes over the course of decades, Hensher serves up two families worth of bland characters leading flat lives. The Northern Clemency was clearly long enough for that comparison, at more than 700 pages. It also meant my expectations were lowered when I finally began which might have been a factor in my subsequent enjoyment but, on balance, it think it's more likely that The Northern Clemency is excellent. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published The book has all the blessings of art, with the pulse of what Henry James called ‘felt life’ at the centre of its moral adventures.’ Andrew O’Hagan. 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