Customer Reviews

Hide and Seek

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This is the most important book that Dennis Potter published. A novel, it prefigures much of the work of the late 1970s and 1980s, and acts as a bridge back to the impressive Son of Man.

It is a book of many layers, and later work such as Andrew Crumey's Music in a foreign language, and Pfitz, adopt a similar approach.

It has a disconcerting opening - a man at his psychiatrist announcing that he is a character in a novel. The multiple layers unravel from there. Having identified the central character (and having been told of the characteristics the reader realises he shares with Potter), the author intervenes and he stresses the differences between his lifestyle and that of the character. We then take a further step back and view the author in the third person.

The relationship between characters and their creator (very Pirandello), and between people and God, are themes Potter continued to revisit. We are here seeing the disintegration of a character, and Potter spares nothing in his portrayal of the breakdown.

There are passages in this book that are repeated in The Singing Detective (the view of sex quoted by Bill Paterson's pyschiatrist there is lifted verbatim from this novel). And, many of the themes of The Singing Detective and Blackeyes can be seen in this novel.

It is out of print, but if you are interested in Potter you must try to get hold of it.

It is a minor book, not brilliant, but it is the key to understanding Potter's later work (from Joe's Ark and Brimstone and Treacle onwards).