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An ambitious novelist who attempts something on as broad canvas as Philip Hensher does here is a rarity – add to that a fastidious attention to period (i.e. 1970s) detail, and – most daunting of all – a large panoply of points of view, shared among several protagonists. But in
The Northern Clemency, Hensher accomplishes all of that – and more – with both precision and panache.
Essentially, this is an (upmarket) family saga, detailing the lives of a pair of families who live on opposite sides of a street in Sheffield in the 1970s, bringing to life a host of characters whose problems – and ultimate destines – both disturb and move the reader. Philip Hensher couches all of this in prose that performs a fascinating balancing act: it is as descriptive and nuanced as one might wish, but it is also extremely refined -- in the sense that there is nary a wasted word; everything here absolutely justifies its place, and Hensher suggests to the careful reader that he has lavished the most forensic of attention on the craft of his novel.
Perhaps the perfect audience for The Northern Clemency is the modern reader who has lamented that contemporary fiction lacks the heft and reach of the great novelists of the past. Such a reader will find that a taste for the substantial is more than fulfilled by Hensher’s highly accomplished saga. --Barry Forshaw
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Book Description
From the author of The Mulberry Empire: a new novel of great dramatic and emotional depth--a sweeping, powerfully engaging story of ordinary lives that are profoundly shaped by the larger forces of history.
In 1974, the Sellers are transplanted from London to Sheffield in northern England. On the day they move in, the Glover household across the street is in upheaval: convinced that his wife is having an affair, Malcolm Glover has suddenly disappeared. The reverberations of this rupture will be felt for years as the connection between the families deepens. 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, decades later.
These lives unfold against a brilliantly rendered backdrop of twentieth-century English history at the dawn of the Thatcher era: prosperity for some and disenfranchisement for others, which will have a drastic impact on both families.
Expansive and deeply felt, The Northern Clemency shows Philip Hensher to be one of our most masterly chroniclers of English life, and a storyteller of virtuosic gifts.
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