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Original Essays | September 9, 2013
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$15.95
New Trade Paper
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Hawthorn & Childby Keith Ridgway
Staff Pick
Hawthorn and Child are London detectives diligently investigating crimes, yet they are a distinctly odd pair. The entire book has an overwhelming feeling of strangeness; even the secondary characters are peculiar and eccentric. Ridgway pushes a lot of boundaries, but he does it exceedingly well. Reading this, I had the feeling of being dropped into an already-existing scenario — nothing is explained, only experienced. While unsettling, the format lends itself to the unfolding of surprise after surprise in an innovative way. Each chapter has the clear sense of being inside the narrator's head, with the action being a blend of the character's perspective and the actual truth. The result is more a feeling of "experiencing" this book rather than reading it. I almost wonder if Ridgway knew where this book was going when he started writing; it seems that fresh and unexpected. It feels more like a collection of short stories, with central characters running throughout, rather than a straight-up novel. The "chapters" are not really connected to each other, but, as much as I hate short stories, that isn't an issue here. There is a real depth to Hawthorn's character; the book glides along quickly and feels hefty enough to be classified as a novel. Not for the squeamish, parts of Hawthorn and Child are as dark as anything I've come across. But, for a purely novel experience — one that is seriously well done, if slightly bizarre — this is your book. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A book that redefines our ideas of what a novel can do, Hawthorn & Child breaks every mold. Hilarious and cunning, genuinely eerie and yet peculiarly moving, Hawthorn & Child tosses away our fantasies of resolution in favor of the magic of suspended belief.
Hawthorn and Child are mid-ranking London detectives tasked with finding significance in scattered facts. They are comic ghosts – one white and gay, one black and straight – turning up repeatedly and ineffectively to haunt the scene of some catastrophe or another, appearing and disappearing along with a ghost car, a crime boss, a pickpocket, a dead race-car driver, and a pack of wolves. Mysteries are everywhere, but the biggest of all is our mysterious – and hopeless – compulsion to solve them. In Hawthorn & Child, the trippiest novel New Directions has published in years, the only certainty is that we’ve all misunderstood everything. Synopsis:A mind-blowing adventure into a literary fourth dimension: part noir, part London snapshot, all unsettlingly amazing
About the AuthorKeith Ridgway is a Dubliner and the author of the award-winning novels The Long Falling, The Parts, and Animals, as well as the collection of stories Standard Time and novella Horses. He lived in North London for eleven years. He now lives somewhere else.
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