- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Fourth Estate (29 April 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007355009
- ISBN-13: 978-0007355006
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 90,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Burley Cross Postbox Theft
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Product Description
Review
Reviews for Darkmans:
'This is the work of a very fine storyteller indeed.' The Times
'The writing is often hilarious. Barker carves up the suburban dinner party savagely, and anatomises the dodgiest builder on Earth…Nicola Barker's writing is hugely attractive, because it conjures images and ideas from a tremendous wealth of inspiration. It is the product of a powerful, sprawling imagination.' Daily Telegraph
'A loud shout of glorious, untidy, angry, joyous life. Barker is a great, restless novelist, and "Darkmans" is a great, restless novel. At the end of 838 blinding, high-octane pages, I was bereft that there weren't 838 more.' Guardian
‘When a new novel by Nicola Barker arrives, there is a host of reasons to break into a smile. Chief among them is that she is one of the most exhilarating, audacious and, for want of a better word, ballsy writers of her generation. And, in a publishing terrain that often inhibits ambition and promotes homogeneity, there is nobody writing quite like her.' Observer
'A visionary epic.' Sam Leith, in the Spectator 'Books of the Year'
'Darkmans is all about the ebullience of language, the erruption of the past into the present, the seriousness and darkness of jokes. It defies moderation because it celebrates misrule. Highly original and interesting, and doing it with conviction and sharp humour. I know I whipped through its more than 800 pages with attention unbroken. And I know that the very night I finished it, it showed up in my dreams. Seriously.' Literary Review
‘Barker's delightfully Skewed perspective on this world is laugh–out–loud funny' Marie Claire
‘Her creation is a mix of modern–day Cranford with the League of Gentlemen's Royston Vasey…If the reader is willing to suspend disbelief, however, they should find ample reward in Barker's wit and linguistic flair' Rosamund Urwin, Evening Standard
Product Description
From the award-winning author of Darkmans comes a comic epistolary novel of startling originality and wit.
Reading other people’s letters is always a guilty pleasure. But for two West Yorkshire policemen - contemplating a cache of 26 undelivered missives, retrieved from a back alley behind the hairdresser's in Skipton - it's also a job of work. The quaint moorside village of Burley Cross has been plunged into turmoil by the theft of the contents of its postbox, and when PC Roger Topping takes over the case, which his higher-ranking schoolmate Sergeant Laurence Everill has so far failed to crack, his expectations of success are not high.
Yet Topping's investigation into the curtain-twitching lives of Jeremy Baverstock, Baxter Thorndyke, the Jonty Weiss-Quinns, Mrs Tirza Parry (widow), and a splendid array of other weird and wonderful characters, will not only uncover the dark underbelly of his scenic beat, but also the fundamental strengths of his own character.
The denizens of Burley Cross inhabit a world where everyone’s secrets are worn on their sleeves, pettiness becomes epic, little is writ large. From complaints about dog shit to passive-aggressive fanmail, from biblical amateur dramatics to an Auction of Promises that goes staggeringly, horribly wrong, Nicola Barker’s epistolary novel is a work of immense comic range. It is also unlike anything she has written before. Brazenly mischievous and irresistibly readable, Burley Cross Postbox Theft is a Cranford for today, albeit with a decent dose of Tamiflu, some dodgy sex-therapy and a whiff of cheap-smelling vodka.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I rather like the epistolary form for novels so I was looking forward to reading this but I was a little disappointed with it. A post box in the little Yorkshire village of Burley Cross is broken into and the letters dumped in a back alley in nearby Skipton. The police are puzzled. The whole package of letters - 26 in all - is forwarded to P C Roger Topping at Ilkley - whose beat it is - to see if he can unravel who broke into the post box and why.
The first letter almost put me off the book as it was very long and mainly about people taking their dogs for a walk on the moors and not clearing up after them - not one of my favourite subjects. But the book improved and many of the Burley Cross residents are revealed through their letters. There are eccentricities and secrets, apologies, complaints and plans for the future. Light is shed on some puzzling incidents from the recent and not so recent past and at least some of the letters would have been better not read by the police. My particular favourite was Seb's description of the Auction of Promises and how all the promises turned out when performed and I laughed out loud over some of that one.
The book is undoubtedly well written and very clever and I did enjoy reading it though I could have done without the transcript of the tape made when an individual was sitting on the toilet - complete with sound effects. Some of the letters were perhaps a little long but others were really good and just the right length. They could be read in any order as long as the last few letters from Roger Topping are read after the rest as they contain his solution of the crime.
The first letter almost put me off the book as it was very long and mainly about people taking their dogs for a walk on the moors and not clearing up after them - not one of my favourite subjects. But the book improved and many of the Burley Cross residents are revealed through their letters. There are eccentricities and secrets, apologies, complaints and plans for the future. Light is shed on some puzzling incidents from the recent and not so recent past and at least some of the letters would have been better not read by the police. My particular favourite was Seb's description of the Auction of Promises and how all the promises turned out when performed and I laughed out loud over some of that one.
The book is undoubtedly well written and very clever and I did enjoy reading it though I could have done without the transcript of the tape made when an individual was sitting on the toilet - complete with sound effects. Some of the letters were perhaps a little long but others were really good and just the right length. They could be read in any order as long as the last few letters from Roger Topping are read after the rest as they contain his solution of the crime.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Nicola Barker has written a book about letters, who stole them and how PC Roger Topping finds out. It's one of those novels whose story is told entirely in letters too. This one is different in that all the writers are incredibly irritating, daft, pompous, verbose, gossipy, selfish, opinionated, annoying and usually a combination of at least two of those. Barker impersonates these characters outstandingly well, defining their voices to a tee, so that you could be reading the real thing. The tone of each letter is crafted to perfection.
The problem is that in real life, you'd do anything to avoid reading these things. The policeman originally investigating the problem was driven to distraction by having to deal with this bunch of people and their missing correspondence. Barker's letters are written in the styles of irritating people, so they end up being intensely irritating themselves. Even the characters who are reasonably pleasant are too dim to write well; Barker impersonates them so closely that I found her own work intolerable to read. It's a fine piece of perfectly formed comedy caricature writing, and I hope that she produces something soon about people who aren't so god awful that you just don't care what happens to their stupid post box.
The problem is that in real life, you'd do anything to avoid reading these things. The policeman originally investigating the problem was driven to distraction by having to deal with this bunch of people and their missing correspondence. Barker's letters are written in the styles of irritating people, so they end up being intensely irritating themselves. Even the characters who are reasonably pleasant are too dim to write well; Barker impersonates them so closely that I found her own work intolerable to read. It's a fine piece of perfectly formed comedy caricature writing, and I hope that she produces something soon about people who aren't so god awful that you just don't care what happens to their stupid post box.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This book has been much discussed and hyped in the literary media of late so I was interested to get hold of a review copy, to see if the excitement was justified...
By now you'll know the premise of the book; a sack of letters is discovered by two mildly comedic policemen who then go about sorting them out, and reading them of course. Much hilarity then ensures.
Except it doesn't. This is a book and indeed an idea which promises much but, if you excuse the rather weak pun, it delivers little really apart from some examples of lazy writing and over-tired Les Dawson-esque clichés. Not to mention half baked ideas whereby the plot, characters and subject matter could have been funny; but aren't. In fact, at times the whole thing is a little annoying.
All that said, the book is a decent read if you can suspend both your belief and your normal senses of humour and mirth, and yes, parts of it are well written and not as tired as the rest. And the idea is a great one, even if the author hasn't, in my view, executed it all that well.
But ultimately, this is a tale of a load of letters written by a bunch of objectionables that are normally the sort you'd try your very, very best to avoid reading. Whether you choose to avoid reading this book is up to you.
By now you'll know the premise of the book; a sack of letters is discovered by two mildly comedic policemen who then go about sorting them out, and reading them of course. Much hilarity then ensures.
Except it doesn't. This is a book and indeed an idea which promises much but, if you excuse the rather weak pun, it delivers little really apart from some examples of lazy writing and over-tired Les Dawson-esque clichés. Not to mention half baked ideas whereby the plot, characters and subject matter could have been funny; but aren't. In fact, at times the whole thing is a little annoying.
All that said, the book is a decent read if you can suspend both your belief and your normal senses of humour and mirth, and yes, parts of it are well written and not as tired as the rest. And the idea is a great one, even if the author hasn't, in my view, executed it all that well.
But ultimately, this is a tale of a load of letters written by a bunch of objectionables that are normally the sort you'd try your very, very best to avoid reading. Whether you choose to avoid reading this book is up to you.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Trying too hard.
Reading through previous Amazon reviews, I found that 'Kartowidjojo' has summed it up perfectly. An unreadable book, irritating and cliched. Read more
Published 2 months ago by funnyjaybird
Chintzy, Lacy and Smells of Camphor
Epistolary novel! Welcome back to the past! A village post-box is robbed just before Christmas and the seedy minutiae of village life exposed when the missing contents are examined... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kartowidjojo
Perfection
This is a great, great read. I dont normally do "funny" books but gave this a go and found it clever, hilarious, in parts moving, just perfection... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Simz
one star because I have to.
This is basically a fictional collection of letters that you would find if you read through a post box and didn't bother with the bills. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mad Saint Uden
Not as funny as I'd hoped
This book has sat on my shelf for over a year before I picked it up; I fanceid a good laugh and this book promised to give me that. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Boof
Disjointed and annoying, and not in a good way
I have always been a fan of Nicola Barker's books in the past, from Wide Open, which I thought was amazing, back to the earlier short stories, and then on through Behindlings,... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Gołębnik
Northen England madness
I thought this book was a great read. It is funny and intelligent, it gives a view of a collection of very strange characters who live in a villiage up north who all intermingle in... Read more
Published 15 months ago by alice
Nice idea, but tedious execution
Burley Cross Postbox Theft is set in a small Yorkshire village where the contents of the local postbox have been stolen and two policemen are in charge of the investigation. Read more
Published 16 months ago by R. W. Mackenzie
You'd have to be a real misery-guts not to love this.
Burley Cross is not unadjacent to Ilkley, and is a small dormitory village where everyone knows everyone else's business, notwithstanding some carefully kept secrets. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Eileen Shaw
Village post box robbery whodunit
A village post office box has been raided, and the contents subsequently found dumped in a nearby town. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Elizabeth Trigg
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