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Review
'A vastly satisfying and adventurous novel, a state-of-the-nation comedy from a novelist who can do pretty much anything she likes and is having a great time doing it. This really isn't a book to pass up.’ Daily Telegraph
'This is the work of a writer in love with language and the ways people employ it to express themselves…nothing short of dazzling.' Observer
'A superb comic novel…the collective, whispery subconscious of a small community is brilliantly suggested through almost imperceptible echoes.' Daily Mail
‘Intensely pleasurable. Barker’s sheer energy is irresistible while the intelligence that drives this small comic universe is both spikily awkward and sweetly benign… For inventiveness and verve…no one else comes close.’ Guardian
‘The cacophony of voices is the perfect showcase for Barker’s linguistic games. From love-letters to suicide notes, her language vaults, somersaults and cartwheels across the page… it might just win her a new legion of fans tempted by this funny, heartbreaking book.’ Sunday Telegraph
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 27 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
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 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.
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.
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