Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Penman & I
The acclaimed screenwriter and director of several films, including the cult classic "Withnail & I" and "The Killing Fields" (which won the Academy Award in 1984 for best picture), Bruce Robinson now adds novelist to his long list of credits. The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is a smart, hilarious, and heart-flicking debut that revolves around the scatological misadventures of the spry and spunky working-class teen Thomas Penman. Published in England to rave reviews, the novel chronicles the title character's Salingeresque search for his grandfather's legendary pornography collection, a quest that ultimately reveals intimate secrets much darker than any Thomas could have imagined.
It is England in the cold war '50s, and adulterous secrets divide the Penman family, much the same as the letter "A" divides Puritan New England in The Scarlet Letter. Thomas — a smoker, drinker, obsessive snooper, munitions tinkerer, and lover of all things pornographic — is a glorious failure at everything he attempts. He's not an athlete, not a scholar, and not a female-favorite. His teachers think he's a pervert; his best friend's parents might as well call him the Devil Incarnate; and his parents hardly acknowledge his existence at all. And Bruce Robinson knows how Thomas feels. With a snappy accent that makes even his constant cursing melodic, Robinson says, "Most of Penman is autobiography, really. I lived a terribly f—-ing constricted childhood. The biggest difference between England and America at that time was that we got busted flat bytheSecond World War while the States profited from it."
Robinson is pleased to admit that Thomas's bowel problems are about the only thing that isn't autobiographical. As a child, Thomas rebelled against his parents by messing his underpants and hiding them around the house. "I got this directly out of Freud," Robinson says. "One of the first rewards that you get from your parents is when you crap when they want you to. For a kid without the facility to speak, Thomas learned to crap himself when his parents did something he didn't like." One of the many laugh-out-loud scenes concerns an accidental soiling in math class. While he's drawing perverse pictures of Gwen Hackett — a middle-school crush who barely knows Thomas exists — his teacher asks to see what's holding his gaze. Frightened by the prospect of punishment, Thomas flinches and soils himself — "giving off a stench like water in a jar of dead chrysanths." Without hesitation, he's sent to the principal's office for a caning. Fearing a lashing on his arse, Thomas muses, "You're talking front row of a major nightmare" and beelines to the closest lavatory to lose the unwanted load. By mistake, he retires to the girls' rest room, where he is caught in the only working stall with his pants, literally, at his ankles.
Robinson says he owes a big nod of the proverbial cap to Charles Dickens, whose autobiographical novel David Copperfield served as inspiration for this book. "The first 170 pages is probably the best prose I've ever written..." Robinson catches the slip, laughs, and continues, "ever read in the English language. It's just magic." Not only does Robinson collect Dickens (he has everything he ever published in first edition), but he also grew up in the same town where Dickens wrote Copperfield. "I even went to a f—-ing school called the Charles Dickens Secondary Modern School."
Thomas' favorite book is David Copperfield as well. He gives his first-edition copy to Gwen Hackett, who warms up to Thomas, giving him a hands-on lesson about the mysteries of the opposite sex. But just when "everything about being alive was improving" for Thomas, he gets some unsettling news from a local fortune teller his grandfather once had intimate relations with. On his deathbed, grandfather Walter confirms the worst. For the past 16 years Thomas has been a walking affirmation of adulterous guilt between his parents, ultimately making him both a stranger to himself and in possession of the full truth about his identity for the first time in his life.
Robinson doesn't believe Americans will find his tragic humor too foreign. "Americans can understand that deep British thing because the audiences aren't that much different anymore. Besides, this is real stuff here. This is what a boy's life really is: f—-ing, bathroom antics, lurking. I think many Americans will find this as funny as Brits do." Robinson, the morning of the interview, had just finished the screenplay for a new comedy about writer's block — a film he also hopes to direct in the spring of '99. For Robinson, there's not much difference in writing screenplays and novels. "They are both tremendously and horribly difficult," he says. "But no matter what I'm writing, I always try to get a good hearty laugh."
Nelson Taylor is a freelance writer living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He writes for Men's Health, Bikini, Paper, Bomb, and Time Out. His email address is 2taylor@earthlink.net.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Meet thirteen-year-old Thomas Penman. Growing up in a bizarre household of eccentrics, including a mother and father who wage a silent war against each other. Thomas downs his first drink, smokes his first cigarette, pursues the beautiful Gwendolin Hackett—all the while forming a special bond with his beloved, ailing Grandpa Walker, a World War II veteran prone to dark habits. An obsessive snooper, Thomas undertakes a quest to locate his grandfather's legendary pornography collection, setting in motion a series of misadventures that ultimately leads him to uncover secrets about his life that will change him irrevocably. The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is a hilarious, engaging, and touching debut novel, a brilliant tale of one British working-class teen's unforgettable coming of age.
Author Biography: Bruce Robinson is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Killing Fields and starred in the 1998 film Still Crazy. He wrote and directed the black comedy cult classic Withnail and I. He lives in London, England.
SYNOPSIS
The acclaimed screenwriter and director of several films, including the cult classic "Withnail & I" and "The Killing Fields" (which won the Academy Award in 1984 for best picture), Bruce Robinson now adds novelist to his long list of credits. The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is a smart, hilarious, and heart-flicking debut that revolves around the scatological misadventures of the spry and spunky working-class teen Thomas Penman. Published in England to rave reviews, the novel chronicles the title character's Salingeresque search for his grandfather's legendary pornography collection, a quest that ultimately reveals intimate secrets much darker than any Thomas could have imagined.
FROM THE CRITICS
Leeta Taylor - ForeWord Magazine
[The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman] is sharp, spry and darkly funny from the first page to the last.
New York Times Book Review
Never before has the painful, knotty journey to maturity been depicted with such gusto.
Observer (London)
Almost every passage of this book hums with particularity and vision.
Foreword
Sharp, spry, and darkly funny from the first page to the last.
Book Magazine
You'll need a strong stomach to read this....Assuming you're up for the rough experience, you develop a considerable affection for the poor, misunderstood kid whose only real friend is a dying grandather just as sad, perverse and crazy as himself.
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