The Restraint of Beasts [Paperback]

Magnus Mills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 1999

CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF 1998 BY THE "LOS ANGELES TIMES" AND WINNER OF ENGLAND'S MCKITTERICK PRICE This award-winning literary tour de force, shortlisted for both the Whitbread and the Booker prizes, tells the captivating tale of three men: Tam and Richie, good Scots lads at heart who have turned loafing into an art form, and their ever exasperated English foreman. Carefully laid plans go haywire from the start, and as they cover their tracks the best they can, the hapless trio heads south from Scotland to do a job in England, where they find that their reputation has preceded them, to say the least. This outrageous and brilliant tale is riveting from beginning to end, introducing a magnetic new voice.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Good fences may make good neighbors, but in Magnus Mills's first novel, bad fences make for high tension indeed. An eerie noir fable told in a grim, deadpan voice, The Restraint of Beasts begins as an unnamed English fence builder finds himself promoted to foreman over Tam and Richie, two undermotivated Scots laborers. They've just been sent out to fix a high-tension fence when events go horribly awry--and that's just the beginning. For the rest of the novel, as his charges drink, smoke, loaf, and pound the occasional post, things go wrong over and over again. In a sense, that's all you can truly rely on in Mills's fictional world. It is not giving away too much to say that with these particular fencers on the job, you'd best watch your back. And your front, for that matter. And maybe keep a firm eye on the skies, just in case.

The team travels south to England, where they live out of a damp, cold caravan in the town of Upper Bowland. They're soon at loggerheads with the sinister Hall brothers, whose business enterprises seem to combine fencing, butchering, sausage-making, and a fierce attachment to school meals. "We committed no end of good deeds!" cries John Hall. "Yet still we lost the school dinners! Always the authorities laying down some new requirement, one thing after another! This time is seems we must provide more living space. Very well! If that's the way they want it, we'll go on building fences for ever if necessary! We'll build pens and compounds and enclosures! And we'll make sure we never lose them again!"

In between placing Kafkaesque obstacles in his narrator's path, Mills seeds his debut with small, darkly comic touches: Tam's father, whom we last see erecting a stockade round his house "to stop you from coming home any more"; the sound of Richie's Black Sabbath tapes "slowly being stretched in an under-powered cassette player"; the caravan's encroaching squalor; An Early Bath for Thompson, the book that Richie tries without success to read. No doubt about it, The Restraint of Beasts is a strange novel that only grows stranger as it progresses; with luck, it augurs more brilliant, odd work from Mills. --Mary Park --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Good fences make bad labors in this mordant satire of tensions among the rural British working classes from Mills, a former London bus driver. The trouble begins in Scotland when Tam Finlayson, Richie Campbell and their unnamed English foreman (who narrates the novel) must rebuild a slack fence before leaving for a more extensive job in England. Their on-site supervisor hovers over them nervously until Tam accidentally kills him by releasing a tension wire at the wrong moment. The workers bury the body, hoping his absence will not be missed. Soon after beginning work in England, Richie kills their new supervisor with a clumsily thrown post. The next assignment, involving seven-foot-high electric fences intended for "the restraint of beasts," yields yet another accidental death and coverup. Mills's narrator describes these horrific events in an hilariously controlled and pervasive deadpan. As bodies accumulate and vanish without comment from police or other authorities, the novel moves toward a disturbing?if predictable?conclusion. Mills's satire occasionally loses its edge when he describes the technicalities of fence-building (a conceit he leans on heavily) and spends an awfully long time lending his sharp ears to dreary sessions in village pubs. Yet between the dull stretches, the clash between power-hungry bureaucrats and alcoholic, downtrodden laborers finds haunting, comic expression in this promising debut.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Scribner pbk. ed edition (October 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684865114
• ISBN-13: 978-0684865119
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A standout for the characters and humor, January 31, 2002

By 

K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Restraint of Beasts (Paperback)

I absolutely loved this well-written glimpse into the life of 3 fence builders and their adventures in Scotland and England.I was laughing throughout this book, but readers should be forewarned that the humor isn't for everyone (it is a very dry humor, even a black humor) and the plot, such as it is, tends to ramble, meander and go in anything but a straightforward direction. Still, I couldn't put it down, riveted by the lives of these three men, the various crises that came up and their way of bumbling through each day as best they could. It was obvious that the author know about the life described here.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wierd or what?, December 1, 1999

By 

"andrea54" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Restraint of Beasts (Paperback)

This book was read on the BBC Radio 4 "Late book".

So fascinated was I that, on returning home from the pub, I met a group of mates who said "Come for a late drink! " and I said "Er - no- I have to listen to the late book on the wireless..." (And thereby marking me down as a VERY SAD PERSON INDEED)

I read a LOT of books last year and this was one of the two that really hangs around (lurking in a leather jacket) in my memory. Brilliant, and yes, VERY funny.

PS My partner didn't like it - he said it had "No proper ending"!

PPS The other book was Seamus Deane "Reading in the Dark" - also brilliant (and not as depressing as you might think).

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hynotically compelling, December 28, 1999

By 

Kristin Abkemeier (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Restraint of Beasts (Paperback)

I have a weakness for dark comedies about average people just trying to get from day to day while retaining grasp of their pride and sanity, and this book fits into the surreal end of that category. The pace is slow, the action is monotonous, the characters lack insight into their own actions--yet I found myself far more engaged in a novel revolving around fence post driving than I ever expected to be. The languid predictability of day after day of work becomes hypnotic, until jagged reality asserts itself. An excellent afternoon's read.