Overweight and overwrought, Howard Cleaver, London's most successful journalist, abruptly abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. It is the autumn of 2004 and Cleaver has recently enjoyed the celebrity attending his memorable interview with the President of the United States and suffered uncomfortable scrutiny following the publication of his elder son's novelised autobiography. He flies to Milan and heads deep into the South Tyrol, fetching up in the village of Luttach. His quest: to find a remote mountain hut, to get beyond the reach of email, and the mobile phone, and the interminable clamour of the public voice. Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the Tyrolese peasants, he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Through terse, confrontational prose, Parks puts on display the self-absorbed and egotistical mind of notable British journalist and womanizer Harold Cleaver. After sticking it to the unnamed (though unmistakable) current president of the United States in a television interview, Cleaver should be on top of the world. But his son's just-released damning roman-à-clef, In His Shadow, disrupts Cleaver's life and moment of glory. Cleaver sequesters himself in the German mountains inside a remote, ratty cottage—the former home of a now-deceased Nazi soldier—and finds that while he can flee his fast-paced existence, his psyche is not so easily quieted. With a doll named Olga and a dog named Uli as his only companions, Cleaver finds himself in constant debate about his deceased daughter, Angela, his attempt to replace her through extra-marital affairs, and his son's betrayal. As Cleaver battles his demons and tries to come to terms with his past, his food supply diminishes and a bruising blizzard rages outside. Parks (Europa) gives readers a robust protagonist riddled with doubt, and the path he sends him down is both treacherous and cathartic. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Parks, the author of Europa (1998), shortlisted for the Booker, here offers a multifaceted portrait of a crotchety journalist. Harold Cleaver, fresh off a hard-hitting interview with a cowboy-like American president, should be basking in the glowing reviews of his rapier-like wit. Instead, he heads for the remote mountains of Germany, cutting himself off from family, colleagues, and, especially, all forms of communication. He’s reeling from the recent publication of a roman á clef penned by his son, which paints a less than favorable view of Harold’s philandering, egotism, and massive neglect of his children. Determined to face down his demons in stark isolation while battling the arctic cold and primitive conditions, Cleaver finds himself obsessively thinking about his late daughter and his inept attempts to deal with his grief by engaging in serial affairs with much younger women. In a character portrait fairly shimmering with intelligence, Parks moves with facility from slapstick scenes depicting Cleaver’s towering ego to surprisingly tender moments as the great man acknowledges that he is deeply flawed and forgives himself for it. --Joanne Wilkinson
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece...,
By
This review is from: Cleaver: A Novel (Hardcover)
Harold Cleaver, who is in his mid to late 50's, is balding, overweight, a womanizer and also happens to be Britain's most celebrated T.V. journalist.
This story is set in 2004. Several days before his interview with the U.S. President, he reads a just published but thinly veiled fiction novel written by his son about Harold and his family titled "Under His Shadow." His son viciously and repeatedly attacks him in his expose: "my father was as utterly incapable of leaving any woman alone as he was utterly, absolutely and irremediably incapable of turning down any offer of food or drink or cigarettes, or, even any opportunity to appear in public at any moment of the day or night...He was ambition, avarice and appetite incarnate - the three As as he called them - at once and always carnal and carnivorous." You get the picture. Harold then interviews (unloads his rage on) the U.S. President when he visits Britain in what many describe as his best professional interview of his career. The President is expecting a "friendly" Q&A session and instead finds that he is intellectually ambushed by Cleaver. Rather than basking in his elevated celebrity, Harold finds that he is reeling from his son's disclosures and characterizations including the nature of his partnership (not marriage) with his wife, his father's "responsibility" for his twin sister's death among a series of other so-called "fictional" observations (accusations) of his Father's character. Harold decides to walk away from it all. He leaves Britain to find solitude in a cabin in the remote mountain tops of Italy near the Austrian border - to get away from television, cell phones, the internet, newspapers, his son's book, his partner and mistresses. Instead of finding solitude, Harold finds that he is replaying his son's book chapter by chapter. His mind is constantly chattering as he agonizes over his weight, his cold feet, the lack of full and accurate disclosure in his son's book, his temptation to check voice mails and emails, his inability to speak/understand German, his frustration in lighting a lantern and other day to day necessities as the urbanite is challenged in living in the mountains. Harold's mental and physical struggles make this one of the funniest novels that I have read. Tim Parks manages to masterfully weave the internal (mind chatter) and external dialog and often times in the same paragraph. Harold travels from the present, to the past, from the internal to the external - and Parks makes Harold's stream of consciousness all stick together. At 6,000 feet in the mountains, Harold finds that rather than leaving all of the noise of the press and his family behind, he discovers that "nowhere is so noisy and dangerous as the solitary mind." "Why am I not relaxing?" This book was selected as a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year and it certainly lives up to its billing.
3.0 out of 5 stars
no matter where you go, there you are,
By
This review is from: Cleaver: A Novel (Hardcover)
I enjoyed this book even though I will spend more time critiquing than complementing. At this point, there is only one other review giving 5 stars and I think this book is more like a 3.5.
Harold Cleaver moves to a Austrian city high in the mountains where everyone except Harold speaks German. Cleaver is trying to get away from everything, especially his life and family. However, he spends just about every minute of the day thinking (obsessively) about his life and family. There's an old zen saying that no matter where you go, there you are. Cleaver rarely gets to Be Here Now and spends most of time in the past. Since most people speak German, he has trouble communicating with anyone. I enjoyed the part of his trying to communicate but what I did not like about it was never knowing what was being said even when Cleaver used some of his high school German. So the narrator (Cleaver) is able to do some of the communication but the reader NEVER gets to know. I understand the writer trying to make us feel what Cleaver is going through but he keeps us out of that loop. He does this way too often in the first half of the book and I constantly battled about just putting the book down. The second half of the book is much better because there are more characters involved in it. Cleaver is not a likeable person and the first half can drag at times. You feel "who cares" what happens to this person. In the second half, more people become involved and the story gets much stronger. Interesting ending to the book.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Spreken ze Deutsche?,
By JD (Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cleaver: A Novel (Hardcover)
I don't.
And there's a LOT of it in this story. OK ... so the language barrier adds to Cleaver's physical isolation. I get it. BUT Cleaver knows SOME German, he's able to communicate even if it's on a rather elementary level. But half the time we're not told what HE'S saying or what HE THINKS is being said to him. On the plus side, I like stream of consciousness narration. Overall, it was a very good device for this story. And the descriptions -- emotional and physical -- were marvelous. But trying to second guess what the Germans were saying -- not knowing if it was prattle or if I was missing out on something useful -- just became too tiresome, and I quit the book about half way through.
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