Classic Comic
Novel. Sadly, I have the reputation for being a funny guy so it’s
disconcerting when I say what I think are serious things in meetings and people
laugh. Most disconcerting. So along with a reputation I wouldn’t wish on anybody, I
have excruciatingly high standards when
it comes to comic novels. They can be too mean, like Waugh’s Vile Bodies. Too bitter and relentless
like Catch-22.
Too silly like Three Men in a Boat.
Too fey like Thank You, Jeeves. Too
affected like Cat’s Cradle. My patience seeps away with a satire sized beyond a novelette – see Waugh’s The Loved One or Dahl’s My Uncle Oswald, both of which are
worth reading but feel long at the three-quarter point. Henry Cecil (said
“sehsil”, not “seesil”) is good because his comic novels are always the right length.
The Asking Price
– Henry Cecil
In Just
within the Law, Cecil describes his writing with, “The basis of my
stories is the occurrence of an extremely improbable event, followed by
completely logical action by all the characters in the story.”
In this comic novel, the extremely improbable event comes
out of a situation. In a London
neighborhood in the mid-Sixties, Ronald Holbrook lives on a small competence
that he built from lucrative dealings on the black market right after WWII. The
house bought on the ill-gotten proceeds has been his home for twenty years. At
fifty-seven, he finds himself unmarried and unlikely to marry. However,
seventeen-year-old Jane Doughty, the daughter of his next-door neighbors, has
been infatuated with him literally her entire life. Her single goal in life – her
steely obsession - is to be married to her Ronnieboy. This situation is first comic,
then gradually becomes discomfiting and sinister, and we get the extremely improbable event which precipitates another
situation.
That’s all the story you’re getting out of me lest I
spoil the surprising twists and turns that Cecil puts his characters through.
Not only is Cecil gifted as to plotting and characterization (even the walk-ons live and breathe), but he builds suspense as
skillfully as, say, Ruth Rendell. The dialogue is sharp and witty. Jane asks
her Ronnieboy, who’s been putting off lovemaking, “Do virtuous women have fun?
I don’t want to be like the Albert Memorial, all stuck up and nowhere to go.” I
don’t wonder that many of his books were adopted for BBC Radio and he wrote plays
too.
The only other practitioner of comic legal fiction that I
can think of is John Mortimer and his excellent Rumpole stories. Cecil has more
generosity and charity than Mortimer does; Cecil spends more time explaining
British law. I can’t recommend Henry Cecil high enough for his lucid prose,
original tale-spinning, brilliant characterization, deft plotting and
spellbinding surprises.
More reviews of
Henry Cecil novels
Humour is so tricky! I just read The Loved One and thought it pretty funny if a little cruel. If it had been longer, it would have been unbearable. But if a book can make me laugh out loud, I usually consider it a success.
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