Books

by Jan Walker

This is a novel about an apartment house in Bloomsbury and the assortment of people who live in this urban doss-house; their memories, their ghosts and their dirty little sexual itches.

James Lynne, the author, is right of course as Jimmy—a retarded 40 year old—discovers sex, is wallowing in muck and the only one a boy can trust is his mother, even if she is dead and walloped him during his toilet-training

Not content with having only one of his characters retarded the author has decided to add a few more colourful characters to his menagerie. Clare who blackmails her flatmate with her Lesbian tendencies and is taken to seducing the retarded 40 year old; the Abbots who have the nasty habit of correlating eating with sex; the Marchioness in the basement reliving a military seige; and other varied oddities.

This is a tasteless and grubby little novel, unfunny and unsubtle In its toenail sketches of people's physiological deformities. Lynne, who looks like an elderly mod on the dust-jacket, has the dubious distinction of having his first novel being filmed by the makers of Georgy Girl. He has adopted such a superior and supercilious tone with his plot and characters that his novel can only be described as dishonest and crude.

James Broom Lynee: The Marchioness. Macdonald, London. Distributed in NZ by Whitcombe and Tombs, $2.35.