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The Battle for Dole Acre (Paperback)

by Ian Marchant (Author) "As Whittaker was well aware, as aware as you or I, throwing a large tin of pineapple chunks at your boss's head is no way..." (more)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (14 Jun 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575072067
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575072060
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 3.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 844,864 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

After throwing a tin of pineapples at his boss's head, TV superchef Terry Whittaker runs away from London, failed love and a dying father, and arrives in the sleepy old city of Pancester to open his own restaurant. Pancester is slow to change and clings to its medieval traditions and seventies fashions. But now change is being forced on the city as the council wish to build a car park on the Dole Acre Donkey Sanctuary. Whittaker tries to stop the woman he loves, or rather stalks, from developing the site and finds that he has some strange allies: not least a field full of raving hippies, desperate to save England's finest magic mushroom field. With guest appearances from the Time Team gang, the renowned expert on the world's rarest snail, a sinister individual called Q, and the largest ancient priapic temple ever found, The Battle for Dole Acre is a dazzlingly funny novel with enormously popular appeal.


About the Author

Ian Marchant is from Sussex. He has worked in bookmakers' shops, sung in obscure pop groups and stripped in obscure northern comedy clubs. He has left his Lancashire caravan for London, where he manages a bookshop on Charing Cross Road.
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As Whittaker was well aware, as aware as you or I, throwing a large tin of pineapple chunks at your boss's head is no way to get on in business. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars That's Entertainment, 6 Feb 2003
By A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Marchant's first novel (In Southern Waters) was a charming, funny, and poignant series of tales loosely linked around a series of flatmates and neighbors. It's a bit surprising to find the humor painted rather a bit more broadly in this, his second novel. When Terry, London semi-celebrity chef, takes a much needed holiday, he falls in love with the quaint backwater (and fictional) Midlands town of Pancester and moves there to open a restaurant. Through his eyes the reader is introduced to a strange town where ancient rituals are enacted to the delight of tourists, there's a National Museum of Crime and Punishment which is a beard for a crime school, and there are enough oddballs and lovable characters to keep a sitcom writer busy for years. The people are mostly nice, the customs mostly odd, and everybody knows everybody.

Marchant does a nice job of creating a believable, if rather quirky, fictional town, right down to its magic mushroom patch and haunted house. Less believable are the wild cast of characters, from protagonist chef Terry, who is clearly deranged when it comes to women, to tourist honcho Jennifer, who is clearly deranged about building a new car park, to museum director Q, who is... well, just clearly deranged full stop. Of course, it's a broad comedy that's supposed to be absurd and silly and fun, so characterization is not really the point. Still, at times it goes a touch over the top and gets a little too antic. The main plotline is the battle between forces of modernity who want to build a car park for tourists on a plot designated for donkey grazing, and the forces of tradition, led by newcomer Terry. This can all serve as a nice big allegory for modernization in general if one wants, but it's not exactly a subtle or deep one.

Altogether, it's a pleasant enough little entertainment, but on the whole I'd rather revisit the inhabitants of Marchant's first work, whose lives were more real and meaningful to me.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly entertaining read from talented young writer, 13 Aug 2001
"The Battle for Dole Acre" has to be the most enjoyable book I've read for a long time, forcing frequent smiles to play upon the lips of even the most depressive cynic. The quirky town of Pancester comes to life with the author's evocative despcriptions of the weird customs, dreadful eateries and slightly strange, yet overwhelmingly human, characters which populate this novel. The reader cannot help but be swept along with the (anti)hero Whittaker; however dodgy his behaviour, we must still love him as he misguidedly makes his way through life with flair and passion.

With his gift for refreshingly honest and witty prose, Marchant surpasses the achievements of his first book, "In Southern Waters". For me, "The Battle for Dole Acre" ranks alongside David Lodge's "Thinks..." and Jonathon Coe's "The Rotter's Club" in the three best books published in 2001. I only hope that Marchant can gain the place he so clearly deserves in the book-loving public's heart.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A fresh new voice writes about tradition, 29 May 2001
By A Customer
Above all else, this book is funny. Absurdity abounds and realism flounders in this rambling madcap tale as the author introduces us to a world, a town, and a cast of characters we become instantly familiar with and care about - want as friends: passionate Italo-Welsh rockers, lesbian Christians, donkey sanctuary owners, tramps and shy aristos. This is a perfectly plotted novel which runs at break-neck speed and we immediatey become involved in the battle to stop something good and much needed in a town where nothing changes - a car park. Unwittingly, we gang up on the forces of progress too; we join hippies and archaologists, snail experts and donkeys in making sure that nothing new happenes in Pancester. We laugh so much at this eclectic happy novel, that we mostly miss the serious intent and irony of Marchant's central idea: that the English are born Luddites - and that the reader is too. While this is a funny and anarchic book, it is this more sober sub-text which makes TBFDA richer and ultimately cleverer than many of its genre. On closer inspection we see that TBFDA bears a literary stamp and is shot through with literary references and in-jokes which will be spotted by the well-read and the fans of English comic fiction. Ian Marchant mixes Oz mag with PG Wodehouse, Hunter S. Thompson with Antony Powell to produce his own unique style of British gonzo writing. It is clear that he has studied his English comic masters and paid homage to them - before spinning them in the blender of his own imagination. There is something nostalgic and unashamedly English about TBFDA, something as familair and comforting as Hovis bread; Marchant writes unpretentiously and honestly - and we are sad when we have finsihed reading. We miss Taff and Mrs Innes and Olly and the donkeys. Though this book is about upholding tradition, the author gives us something refrehingly new - his voice.
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