Cleaver
by Tim Parks
Vintage, HK$128
Londoner Harold Cleaver has just augmented his journalistic reputation by sparring with a US president and leaving him on the ropes. He should be on top of the world metaphorically, but realises it's in a house above the noise line where he wants to be literally. Which is why we find our ageing protagonist at the start of Tim Parks' novel climbing a mountain after having hastily left home and everything that life entails: his partner Amanda, lovers, television, e-mail and mobile phones. Cleaver is escaping because of a thinly disguised, mordant memoir written about him by his son Alex, whose book has been shortlisted for the Booker prize. In it our protagonist is depicted as a tyrannical lush with louche tendencies and questionable parental skills. Although Cleaver is looking for quiet, the noise in his head is relentless as he tries to cope with truth, as his son sees it, and no mod cons in an environment as alien as the language spoken by the peasants who supply his food and drink. In this cocoon solipsism pings off the walls. Parks, who has produced book after worthy book, poignantly captures the soul-searching of a proud man. More's the pity that the character fails to endear himself to the reader.