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The Northern Clemency

Sounds of the Seventies

by Philip Hensher
Fourth Estate, 738pp, £17.99,

Simon Baker

Tuesday, 1st April 2008

Simon Baker on Philip Hensher's new book

One of the difficult tasks when writing fiction about the recent past is to let the reader know the approximate year in which the action is taking place without giving the impression of scene-setting. A mediocre novelist will cram the early dialogue with clunky references to Ted Heath’s chances at the next election or the BSE crisis, before allowing the political talk to disappear once the desired effect has been achieved. Philip Hensher, at the beginning of this novel, provides his setting with great economy, not through dialogue at all but through a single object: a cocktail stick pinioning a combination of diced cheddar, pineapple and sausage. Once that unholy trinity of sweet-savoury kitsch has appeared, this can only be middle England in the 1970s.

The snack is served at the Glovers’ Sheffield house during a party thrown for the neighbours. The Glovers are comfortably off and unsophisticated. Malcolm works at a building society and takes part in battle re-enactments; until recently Katherine stayed at home, looking after Malcolm and their children, handsome, uncomplicated Daniel, adolescent novelist-manqué Jane and the youngest, Tim, a strange child who recently bought a pet snake which he hides in his room. Lately, Katherine became frustrated with her life and took a job at a fancy florist shop, where she fell for Nick, her boss.

Across the road the Sellers family, Alice, Bernie and their children, Sandra and Francis, arrive from London, and the two families’ lives intertwine. Alice becomes Katherine’s confidante, while Sandra becomes one of the few girls whom Daniel befriends without trying to bed. Sandra is not coping well with the journey to womanhood; she exposes herself to an adult neighbour, and later encourages ten-year-old Tim Glover, many years her junior, to fondle her breasts. The episode scars Tim: he never quite loses the infatuation, just as he never recovers from his mother’s dreadful humiliation of him in public when she discovers his illicit pet. Jane and Francis move separately to London and later meet.

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