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Cleaver: A Novel Hardcover – February 15, 2008

by Tim Parks (Author)

7 customer reviews

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In the aftermath of his celebrated interview with the president and his son's publication of an incriminating memoir, journalist and documentary filmmaker Harold Cleaver unexpectedly relocates to a remote Alpine village where he intends to spend the rest of his life, with unexpected results. 10,000 first printing.

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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.

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

Product details

Hardcover: 322 pages
Publisher: Arcade Publishing (February 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1559708557
ISBN-13: 978-1559708555
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 7 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,921,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9349 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political
- #28133 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Psychological Thrillers
- #89637 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

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Witty and Wonderful

August 20, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a challenging book because it's written in stream of consciousness style, which might be off-putting to some. However, I found that aspect amusing because Cleaver's over-active squirrel brain reminds me of my own, leaping from subject to subject, as I find myself standing on the patio deep in thought about Barack Obama with a phone book in one hand and a pressure gauge in the other.

But the story is a good one wherein a decent man is played and manipulated throughout his life - although he does a fair bit of the same, achieving great heights of celebrity and accomplishment. But at about age 60 (sorry, can't remember specifically), grief-stricken and at the end of his rope, he takes his overweight and out of shape body and his tech-addicted, co-dependent mind off on a crazy quest to find some kind of peace and independence, some place in the world where he can either end it all or find himself.

He rents a very rustic cabin on the edge of the wilderness where he doesn't speak the language of the locals and thus is misunderstood, mistrusted, and insulated from humanity until the end of the book. (One of the interesting aspects of the story is the immersion in rural German culture.) Cleaver is also completely unprepared for the harshness of the winter in this mountain setting and almost dies as a result. The story is resolved when he demonstrates his core decency, stands up for himself, feels he is of value, and rejects the manipulating nastiness of those who should love him - his family. In a sense, he finds a new family in a very different place.

I could only give this book 4 stars because there were a couple of errors of logic in it which revealed a need for a bit more editing - and the book is confusing enough with its switches between tense and point of view - but I frankly couldn't put it down, and I still, ten days later, think of the protagonist as a real person. I'm glad I read it, and I heartily recommend it, but it's a challenging read. Bottom line: if you're middle-aged and you're interested in seeing a character bust loose from convention and finally, at midlife, find his own way, this is a fantastic story.
Lynne Spreen, Author of award-winning midlife novel Dakota Blues

Comment

Another good one from Parks

April 10, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I like this book even better than Europa. I like the main character more. I think he has some interesting things to say along the way. I also like this book because of the pace. Parks doesn't mess around and waste time with a lot of background at the beginning. You get the important background on Cleaver as the story moves along.

Comment

Interior monologue by a master

July 9, 2013

Format: Hardcover

In "Cleaver" Parks once again displays his marvelous writing skills, this time using as a framework a story about a successful middle-age man who abandons his success to seek a quiet primitive life. This type of 'adult male escape' novel must be a 'named' literary category, but I don't know what the name is. Waldenroman? (see my review of "The Lower River," by Paul Theroux) In any case, the framework story is only of secondary interest. This book is primarily about Parks' remarkable writing skills. For long passages of the book the astonishing flow of words is riveting.

His main feature here is interior monologue, but his artistry sparkles in many other ways, everywhere throughout the story. Parks is superb at entering into the intense anxiety of personal emptiness that seems to afflict many middle-age male characters in modern novels written by middle-age men. The combination of worry and pointlessness might be counter-intuitive to someone who's never been through it: if everything is meaningless, what's to worry about? Reading "Cleaver" will clear up any doubts on this issue. Another (thoroughly enjoyable) feature of the story is the almost comically serious indignation expressed over hackneyed writing and its sometime-successes in the world of book prizes.

Parks can fabricate interior monologue of such verisimilitude as to delude the reader into 'thinking' that it's the reader's own thoughts flowing into consciousness. For example, in some passages the protagonist is simultaneously 1) doing some task or project, 2) observing the scene around him, and perhaps interacting with local characters or artifacts, and 3) thinking about his life, his wife, his children, his girlfriends, his job. Parks weaves the different streams of thought and perception so smoothly that it feels like it's me thinking. I myself am the protagonist, doing my task, scanning my surroundings, musing on my life. The three streams feed into each other, getting cross-linked in unexpected ways, exactly the way my mind carries on. Sometimes a fleeting thought will disappear into the flow, only to reappear in another context some paragraphs later. I suspect a computer analysis would conclude that the writing is chaotic, or at least, very badly organized. But for me, Parks' interior monologues are so intimately internalized that I couldn't possibly analyze them while I'm reading. It's only later that I can go back and dissect the paragraphs to "see" the actual sentences that he wrote.

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