I last read this in 2004, and this time I'm intending to go through the set, including Pratt a Manger, which I've still not read.

One of the reasons for re-reading this was as inspiration for the dissertation, so I started out on the lookout for examples of truth and tragedy, but got lost in the story again. I did make a couple of notes, fwiw. At the start of chapter 2:

Three days after Henry was born, Hitler introduced conscription. Twenty-five days after Henry was born, his Auntie Doris bought a genuine crocodile handbag for a pound at Cockayne's Hand Bag Event in Sheffield. Eighty-six days after Henry was born, Baldwin became Prime Minister. Slowly the shadows of war grew darker. Slowly Britain rearmed. Henry remembered none of this.

Maybe I could make something of that: the mixture of truth and fiction to lend credibility to the story; the way that truths and fictions are combined in the same sentences, and the way that the whole paragraph creates a sense of poignancy, but that's partly because I know what else is going to happen (cf Feagin's elicitors/conditioners). But it's jolly hard not to just read it for the story.

There are just too many bits in here that are funny. "I'm saying nowt" etc.. I do always like the description of Fiona though, when Henry returns to Upper Mitherdale: "Fiona had forgotten reading him stories. She had forgotten that she had been a glamorous princess who had brought an aura of sexual mischief into a sick boy's bedroom. She had forgotten that she had been a naughty lady of exquisite beauty, who could have had anybody, and for two worrying years probably had"

The book made me laugh out loud - how often can you say that about a book you've read at least five times? I'm now halfway through the next one.

Completed : 16-Nov-2007