Sensitivity readers were not a thing when Brother of the More Famous Jack was written. What blows some of those fuses when reading Trapido’s novel – aside from the razor-sharp dialogue – is its absence of political correctness.
Weeding out undesirable social “isms” is necessary work, and yet it could be argued that such adjustments create a false “mirror of life” reflection, at the same time giving free speech a very considerable knock. The result is more inclusive fictional worlds than the real world most of us are living in – the world as it ought to be, rather than as it actually is. They routinely employ sensitivity readers to tease out knots of privilege, highlight clumsy cultural gaffes, race, gender, and age-demeaning stereotypes and clichés. And yet, novelists have never written so cautiously, never self-censored so assiduously, in an effort not to cause offence. One of the many reasons we read fiction is to satisfy what Jeanette Winterson calls, in her essay “Writer, Reader, Words”, our “mirror of life” longings. Risque, razor-sharp and politically incorrect But while Mitford’s delightfully dotty Radletts belong to the British upper classes, Trapido’s Goldman family are firmly middle-class, left-wing intellectuals.īeyond Oxbridge and Yale: popular stories bring universities to life - we need more of them in Australia If it is to be compared with any other book, it might be Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, with its large, eccentric family, the Radletts of Alconleigh, and its sharp young women. Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw in Brideshead Revisited (2008) IMDB
On the contrary, Trapido’s novel is funny and endearing it is sometimes sad, but most of all it is unashamedly sexy, even lewd. To anyone who lived through the years spanned by this book, the first part screams 1960s, from Katherine Browne’s little crocheted hats and thigh-high dresses, to the narrative’s pervasive, overt, and at times slightly perverse sexuality.Ĭomparisons with Brideshead Revisited occur because 18-year-old Katherine falls for a family, the Goldmans, but there is no whiff of the doomed melancholy that hangs over the tortured cast of Evelyn Waugh’s book.
Neither have nailed its period, though Rosoff comes closest. Semple describes the book as “ Brideshead Revisited meets Sabrina in bohemian 80s London”, and on the back cover, Meg Rosoff also mentions Brideshead, and places it in the 1970s. Its young protagonist, Katherine Browne, admits to compensating for her natural timidity “with odd flashes of bravado”.Ī dozen pages in, and it feels as if an unknown hand has casually flicked on every light in the house, inadvertently blowing all the fuses. Irreverent and sweary, undeniably sexy, this coming-of-age novel plunges ahead unselfconsciously and with unusual candour. It shimmers among this year’s company of books like some brightly coloured, sharp-witted, mini-skirted dolly bird from the 1960s who has gate-crashed a stuffy dinner party. We recommend all authors to read and follow our guidelines and not post any unsuitable content.Few books survive four decades of near-obscurity and still dazzle, but Trapido’s book does just that.
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