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116 of 129 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A clever and engaging slog on ordinary life..., November 11, 2008
This review is from: The Northern Clemency (Hardcover)
The story is set in Sheffield, an industrial city 200 miles outside of London. It is told over 3 decades (1970's to 90's) and is centered on 2 families who live opposite from each other on same street. Malcolm and Katherine Glover and their family (teenagers Daniel and Jane and 10 year told Tim) were all born and raised in Sheffield and are portrayed as a dysfunctional family. Malcolm works for a building society, gardens in their backyard in his spare time and partakes in civil war re-enactments. While his wife Katherine decides it's time to get out of the house and take a part time job in a new florist shop - where she eventually falls for the owner. Their oldest son Daniel is handsome and spends his time in pursuit of girls. Jane is bookish and dreams of being an author and writing poetry. While young Timothy has an obsession with Snakes. In contrast, the Sellers' family is comparatively normal and is adjusting to the move to the decaying city of Sheffield from London.
* The story is dense and thick on ordinary life. At 597 pages, this is not a breezy, page turning romp. Henser takes us inside the day-to-day life of each family and the relationship between the two families and their children. The book is dense with details of the daily lives of its characters - and it brings color to what goes on behind closed doors of the daily life of middle and working class Britons - - sharing marital problems - - teenagers going through adolescence - - neighbors trying to keep up to their neighbors - - families pretending everything is ok when reality is something altogether different - - gossip - - brutality of kids in school mistreating new kids and on and on. Normal, regular life - shared colorfully in minute detail and as some reviewers coin Henser's "forensic eye for detail and exactness." Here's an example:
"Bernie was gritting his teeth: he was stuck between lorries, thundering along at a frustrating ten miles an hour below the speed limit, boxed in by faster lines of traffic solidly flowing to the right. He felt like a box on a conveyor belt."
* This book tests your reading muscles. The book is separated into 5 sections with the story jumping around between families and individuals and then jumping forward in time - not fully filling in what happened in the gaps but enough to keep you connected, fully engaged and turning the pages.
* The story is deeply introspective and gets you in the mind of the principal characters. Hensher has piercing insights into his characters and how they get through and cope with the day-to-day struggles of life - you become part of the community and the character's individual lives - the secrets, the misunderstandings, the dramas - and you see that those that should be so close as kin are so far away from truly understanding each other. Here's a passage about Jane on a family trip to the country:
"But Jane's pleasure was being ruined by the noises and silences in the car. Her father's concentration on the road had a different quality of silence to it, compared to Tim's dense, bewildered concentration, or the quiet amusement Daniel was extracting from the situation. She wondered what her owned pained silence sounded like from outside - perhaps very much like sulking."
* The book is beautifully written sparking full spectrum of emotions within the detail of the hum drum lives - laughter, sadness, distress, frustration - among hundreds and hundreds of minute details - an insider's diary of people's lives jumping from one character to the next. The author's brilliance keeps you slogging through this slow moving muddy river chugging along at 15-20 pages at a crack then setting it down - taking a full 2 weeks to finish.
The book closes with Daniel (now an adult) speaking to his wife -
"What time is it?" Daniel said, then looked at his watch. "My God, I've been sitting here for three hours."
"Did you drop off?" Helen (his wife) said.
"Don't tell me off, I've got nothing much to do today anyway, said Daniel."
"What are you reading?" Helen said coming over. "What's it about?"
"Oh, I don't know," Daniel said. "It's sort of about people like us, I think."
Yes, I too have been sitting for hours (and hours and hours) slowly turning the pages and reading a book about people just like us.
I enjoyed the book. Put your hip-waders on and take a plunge through this clever, warm, amusing, every-day life swamp.
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50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ordinary life made extraordinary, December 4, 2008
This review is from: The Northern Clemency (Hardcover)
Don't let some of the words used to describe "The Northern Clemency," words like "epic," "rambling," or "stream of consciousness," discourage you from taking up this wonderful novel. It is none of these things. Certainly it is the complicated and intricate story of two English families, a story that is set mostly, but not entirely, in Sheffield, and extends from the Thatcher years to a time not far from the present. The members of the two families, the Sellerses and the Glovers, total nine characters, each of whom is gradually but fully developed, so the novel does, at first, feel like a Russian novel, except that there is no handy list of characters inside the front cover for consultation.
So it's best to read this book when you have a little time, and slowly you'll be drawn in, until you can't put the book down. The novel does not ramble. It is intricately plotted, and even when it ranges as far abroad as Australia, its events seem natural and inevitable. As for "stream of consciousness," no, no, no. "Ulysses" it isn't---except in the sense that the writing is wonderful. In some ways, it will remind you of a John Updike novel in its evocation of the humble quotidian beauty of life in a suburb where people eat Coronation Chicken and fish pie, shop for groceries at the Gateway, and buy their children's school uniforms at Cole's. What's unusual about this novel is its sense of mystery. The two couples at the center of the novel, Katherine and Malcolm Glover and Alice and Bernie Sellers, have marriages that are complicated but somehow familiar in their arguments, joys, and disappointments. But who can account for the ways in which children spin away from their parents in ways unpredictable and strange? How do parents produce children whose only links to each other seem to be their last names and their DNA? It happens all the time, of course. With the phrase "So the garden" the ending of the novel circles back to its beginning. When I finished reading, I turned back to the opening pages, and in looking at the names of the characters, whose fate I now knew, I realized that I would read this book all over again.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A phenomenal novel, May 27, 2008
A fascinating and absolutely rivetting novel.
I finished The Northern Clemency 4 weeks ago and have been letting it sink in. It is a wonderfully resonant novel, and the people and places still live within my head. It is, for want of a better word, a 'family saga', following the lives of two Sheffield families from the 1970s to today but it is also much more than that. It creates an entire world with a 'cast of dozens', with some marvellous cameo chapters devoted to secondary figures who make the world come alive. It is terribly emotionally involving; it made me weep twice, and this is _because_ of its sparse language that allows the reader to fill in the gaps. The book threw me in and tumbled me about, lulled me into complacency and then hurled something unexpected at me.
I loved the way we weave in and out of different people's consciousnesses, and i never quite knew where I was going to end up.
The prose in this novel is to die for. Some favourite images include the phrase ' She looked at him, sharpening a pencil in her head' and, 'He danced, moving from one foot to the other and making vague clay-shaping motions with his hands.' I hope this gives you a tiny idea of the wonderfully assured mastery of this author. I knew I was in good hands from page 1, and I wasn't let down.
I loved the build-up and the way people get mentioned on p.2 and then disappear from view until they unexpectedly reappear on p.64 in new, delightful combinations. I was entranced by the insight that suspense and surprise needn't come from the story itself but can come entirely from the plot, that is, from the way the story is presented. Unexpected revelations sneak up on you and give you delicious shivers of recognition.
I absolutely loved it. I only wish there were additional amazon stars to mete out because this deserves 7 of them. It is truly outstanding.
One of the best novels I have read ever. And I don't say this lightly. (I read a lot, and mostly so-called 'literary fiction'. To give you an idea of my taste: I love Jane Austen, Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy', Italo Calvino and David Mitchell.)
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