2024; 355 pages. New Author? : No. Genres : Satire; British Fiction; Family Life; Romance. Overall Rating : 8*/10.
Take Colin Forrest’s advice: never break off a
romantic relationship with an Albanian girl.
Well, let’s tweak that just a
bit. Never break things off with an
Albanian girl who has three psycho brothers who now feel you’ve dishonored
their entire family and are about to come looking for you with guns and fists.
It’s time for Colin to “disappear”
into the hinterlands of England. Maybe
find a job up in the Norfolk area, and lay low for a while. Make sure your name and picture don’t appear
in any newspaper, at least until those three brothers quit searching for you
and go back to Tirana.
And for heaven’s sake, if an
attractive girl crosses your path, don’t fall in love with her.
What’s To Like...
Full disclosure: at its heart, British Mammals is a Romance novel. But if you’re a male reader, don’t run away
yet, there’s also a bit of violence in the tale, several dysfunctional
characters to keep the personal interactions tense, and lots of nudity.
The book is written in
English, not American, and even though I’ve read plenty of British novels,
there were oodles of new “Britishisms” in the text for me. The most exquisite one is given below, but
there were dozens more, such as: drumby, bint,
twigged, posh totty, moggy, dekko, fizgig, wigging, yonks, hent, and coo, the last two of which I
never did suss out. I’m a language nut,
so I loved all these new words. There
was even an Albanian phrase! When’s the
last time you ran into that language in a book?
Colin finds a job as a
groundsman at a resort called Bubthorpe Pines, which he thinks is a perfect low-stress,
low-profile job. Alas for him, and
happily for the reader, such is not the case.
The resort is on shaky financial ground, and continued employment at the
resort, for both the top dogs and the bottom-rung laborers, is iffy. Tempers are short, solutions are few, and
nudist resorts are losing popularity.
I liked the nudism angle; it gives
the opportunity for some comic relief in the storyline. Resort employees, thankfully, do not have to "undress accordingly", but they do have to "bare witness" (pun intended) and cater to middle-aged practitioners who are developing wrinkles
and sagginess. Activities such as “beach cricket” and weddings take on a whole
new aspect when done without clothes.
As always with a Richard Herley novel, the character-building is excellent. Each person's make-up is unique. One of the main characters is a successful novelist, but presently dealing with some e-book issues at Amazon. I appreciated the insights Richard Herley provides about e-publishing in general, and suspect he is drawing upon his firsthand experiences.
Kewlest New Word ...
Playing Gooseberry (phrase) : an unwanted third
party in a situation where two people want to be alone.
Others: many, many more.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.5/5
based on 2 ratings and 1 review.
Goodreads: 4.50/5 based on 2
ratings and 1 review.
Kindle Details…
British
Mammals currently sells for $2.99 at Amazon. Richard Herley
offers about 16 e-books for your Kindle; they range in price from $0.99
to $3.67. He recently discounted his entire catalog of e-books to $0.99 apiece,
which I greatly appreciated and used to grab a couple more of his novels.
Excerpts...
”What’s he like? Do you fancy him?”
“No.”
“Surely there must be some eligible male
somewhere on Earth who can melt the ice in your veins. What, O frozen-hearted maiden, undisputed
queen of the polar north, does he look like?”
“Tall but not too tall, blond, with no hint
of a man-bun.”
“Do you find him handsome?”
“Sufficiently.”
“Amy!
Your fervour astounds me! So
you’re made of flesh and blood like the rest of us! Have you been drinking in secret? Antifreeze, I mean.” (loc. 558)
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Think about the future?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you think about it?”
”It’s worrying,” Benny decided. “I worry about the future. Of the Pines, I mean, and other things.”
“Surely the future will be like the
past. It always has been, for as long as
I can remember. I mean. What was the
future becomes the present and as soon as it does that it becomes the
past. There’s not much difference
between them, all three of them, except that in the present one is present and
in the past and future one is not.”
This was an unusually long and profound disquisition
on Effy’s part. (loc.
1737)
Trying to pin Effy
down on any topic was like knitting fog.
(loc. 2115)
There's a moderate amount of cussing in British Mammals. I counted 21 instances in the first 20% of
the book, most of which were f-bombs and uttered by two of
the characters, Tez and Bert.
I was surprised by the abruptness of the ending. The tension builds as the various plotlines are cleverly brought together, but things end with just one of them being resolved, and even that one was done verbally. Yes, I could deduce how the other ones would likely be tied up, but it would have been nice to have those wrap-ups confirmed, or even better, subject to some plot twists. Perhaps these storylines will all be addressed in a sequel. One can hope.
Enough of the quibbling. The romance in British Mammals could
have easily become a slog for me, but fortunately Richard Herley’s storytelling and writing
skills kept me turning the pages. I
loved his depictions of the English lifestyle, especially on topics such as class structures, the institution of marriage, and ecological
considerations, such as deforestation to build housing developments. British Mammals was a delightful read for me, and I look forward to the author's next novel.
8 Stars. One last thing. Let’s hear it for NIMBY finding its way into the text here. It's one of my favorite acronyms!
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