Customer Reviews

The Unspeakable Skipton (Prion Humour Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm halfway through this book. It's hilarious. Very
vivid. I've never read anything quite like it. The
fact that grumpy idealogues are denouncing it here is
a sign of how wickedly funny it is. (Grumpy idealogues
are oblivious to funny, but they have a good nose for
wickedness.)

I can understand why this book is not particularly popular; it is certainly not the first book one should read of Johnson. But it does have its moments, and could reasonably compare to humorous genre fiction and light romance. But if you can get into it, it's not so bad, and I for one was not offended by it.

Daniel Skipton, a British writer of limited talent and possibly even more limited success, pretends to himself and the world that he is a great writer. He is, in fact, a liar, a chiseler, a boor, and a swindler, as his conduct over the week or so covered in this novel demonstrates.

Skipton is ruined in the end, of course. I do think that the novel had been better had any of the major characters been at all sympathetic; as it is, only Lotte, Skipton's landlady's daughter, who knits socks for him and brings his meals to his room is at all appealing.

The noted academic & novelist Pamela Hansford Johnston wrote The Unspeakable Skipton in 1959, when the world was a very different place. I first read the book about 20 years ago, and again this week. I enjoyed it greatly both times.

Although it is part of a loose trilogy, it is complete in itself.

The novel certainly doesn't appear anti-feminist to me. Indeed, most of the male characters are shown to be more or less incompetent rogues completely without awareness of any kind - especially self-awareness. The ladies are treated relatively generously, to my mind. And if the Australian woman poet is based on the person that I suspect, then she has got off very lightly indeed!

I would really offer this review only 3.5 stars, if such were allowed. I found the authors style quite engaging, and enjoyed the read very much, but the overall content and story were not particularly stellar. I had hoped for something along the lines of Saki (H.H. Munroe) but such was not to be. If there is ever a dearth of literature in my 'to read' pile I shall consider more by this author, but probably not until then...

As a feminist I found this book troubling. Ms Johnson's humor is unimpressive, and her narrative will prove offensive to most women who believe that males are making women's writing somehow secondary and unimportant. It is very frustrating indeed.

Pamela Hansford Johnson created in "The Unspeakable Skipton" a novel which fails to do justice to the courage of great feminist playwrights, whose works continue to inspire the rest of us. It is unfortunate to find so popular a writer as Ms. Johnson mocking the efforts of Dottie, the feminist writer in the novel, as if Ms. Johnson had no idea of the extent and variety of difficulty feminists have had in trying to get their work staged. It seems that males are given license to treat women's writing as if it were unimportant because writers like Pamela Hansford Johnson mock women writers. It is probably not a very important loss, however, because she writes rather poorly and has little story to tell.