Behindlings: A Novel [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Nicola Barker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2002

the breakthrough commercial novel from one of the greatest comic writers in the language Wesley, spurting with kinetic energy, nasty wit and kindness to animals, ought to be a star. Or so it seems to those who nip at his heels, turn up everywhere he goes, lie in wait for him around every corner. They are his followers -- he calls them the behindlings. And they themselves make quite an ensemble, gathering together their own scabby intentions, irritating habits and weird manners to bury all difference in the common pursuit of their prize, their Wesley. Then there are those who simply stay put. While Wesley and his Followers are forever on the move, someone like Catherine Turpin lies defiantly in the bed she makes for herself, while, outside, her failings are broadcast to all, painted on walls even -- though the curious and the weak still return to her door, to her hydrangea and her stink. And when one of Wesley's newest Followers, Jo Bean, turns out to be more interested in confronting Catherine than winning the race of the behindlings, a few January days on Canvey Island see much of what has been ravelled up for altogether too long come very undone. A cold snap produces an uncommon amount of heat, light, orphans, messing about in boats and just the one unforgettable heron. With Behindlings, the inimitable and ungovernable Nicola Barker takes a character who is perhaps her most compelling creation to date, gives him his head and this novel, and sees him run off with her readers. It is a pretty sight.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Behindlings, the fifth novel from Nicola Barker, is a welcome return, both in mood and in geography, to the gothic terrain of her Impac Prize winner Wide Open. Set in parochial Canvey Island, Essex, this book is inventive, funny, unnerving, and often magnificently strange.

Barker's Canvey (once dubbed "Candy Island" by Daniel Defoe) is, with its Wimpy Bar, dreary pubs, and long-cherished grudges, rumours, and secrets, a quintessentially English small town. Its emotionally damaged population is augmented by the "Behindlings" of the title, a gaggle of oddballs who follow, or more precisely obsessively stalk, the novel's enigmatic central character, Wesley. The architect of a chocolate company-funded treasure hunt, author of a pseudo-Nietzschean walking guide and the man behind the daring theft of an antique pond, he is a rather malevolent Pied Piper. Part Alvin Toffler-quoting, peripatetic environmental visionary, part immoral (and maybe downright evil) fraudster, he's also notorious for feeding the fingers on his right hand to an eagle owl "in an act of penance" for accidentally killing his brother.

Barker has always had a penchant for the surreal, and occasionally here both plot and characterization can get swamped in flights of absurdist imagination. She is perhaps too fond of the elaborate simile. The clackety, clackety of the "like" and "as" of her prose style is, from time to time, a little exasperating. Despite this, her narrative is so alluringly, so charmingly odd, bristling with puzzles and etymological games and full of wonderfully, devilishly comic touches, that it's easy to ignore its minor flaws. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Wesley is not, on the outside, the most prepossessing of men. He is a tramp with a mangled hand, a penchant for attacking sea-fowl and an admiration for the profundities of Alvin Toffler. However, he has a magnetic effect on people. As he pads about the English countryside, he is followed by a diverse collection of groupies as fascinated with his every gesture as primatologists studying the habits of a mountain gorilla. A candy company is behind part of the fascination: they have loosely pegged a treasure hunt, with clues in candy wrappers, to Wesley's habits and quirks. As the novel begins, Wesley has come to the seaside town of Canvey and exerts his peculiar powers of suggestion on a real estate agent, Ted, who finds him lodgings with the town's most scandalous citizen, Katherine Turpin. The Behindlings (as Wesley has denominated his followers) have also, predictably, convened on the spot. Dramatic action, such as it is, revolves around the revelation of the truth about the rumor that Katherine committed incest with her father and aborted his child. While Barker, an idiosyncratic English writer popular in the U.K. (The Three Button Trick and Other Stories; Wide Open), contrives a few clever phrases (at one point, she compares one character's relief at being left alone by his blowhard boss to the "blissful fervor which a ninety year old man might exhibit on discovering-after many years of drought-a small but sweetly intrepid erection floating daintily in the tired suds of a hot bath"), this novel suffers from a general anemia of character and plot.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• ISBN-10: 0060185694
• ASIN: B000HWYUA2
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,064,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Many characters, one voice, May 24, 2005

By 

D. Marshall (Buffalo, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Behindlings: A Novel (Hardcover)

I can't agree with the other reviewers, except to say that yes, I kept reading -- in the hope the story would go somewhere intriguing, or the characters would be properly developed. Many chapters start with an internal monologue, and it's impossible to differentiate the style, wording, or even the intent of the monologue so that you grasp which character is speaking. There are some amusing anecdotes, some interesting imagery, some action passages which hold interest, but on the whole I feel this is an overlong book with a very slim and not particularly interesting story to tell.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't follow me, I'm lost!, April 28, 2009

By 

Dick Johnson (Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Behindlings: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is, well ..., different. It is also strange, long, confusing, exasperating and just plain funny. I was reminded of the movie "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World". The characters are "characters". You might need your tool box because they all have at least one screw loose.

You never seem to know what anyone's motivation is. There's a treasure hunt, but it is more smoke screen than actual plot driver. The "Behindlings" want to decipher the clues, but they also want to preserve the thrill of the chase. Their mixed hero-worship and hatred of Wesley, the key figure behind the quest, and their interactions with one another butt against the other part of the story - past events in Canvey that were hyped in a book by Wesley.

If you like books that fall between the cracks of easily definable genres, then this will appeal to you. If, however, you like books that start at "A" and end neatly at "Z", then you might give this one a pass. I like off kilter books and had fun reading this one. Barker is inventive and if you relax and go with the flow this is worthwhile.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars behindlings, February 12, 2004

By 

"candystripper61" (CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Behindlings: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is strangely inventive and imaginative, ironic in some ways, and impossible to leave it untouched for even a day. Not the ordinary hee-haa comedy sort of book, Behindlings leaves you wanting for more after reading every chapter. Barker's style of writing is fantastic, undoubtedly, and the book is, perhaps, colorful. No matter a bookaholic or not, Behindlings is a book worth your time, money, and focus.