Product Description

George Chell sits in a Suffolk hotel trying to understand his past. As he searches for the sense in his unexplained life - from stifling childhood on a Norwich housing estate to precarious prosperity in the City - he must also cope with the mysteries of the Caradon hotel and its odd proprietor.

From the Back Cover

George Chell sits in a Suffolk seaside hotel trying to understand his past. Twenty years earlier his uncle Edward rescued him from a life of failure and made him his right-hand man as he rose to wealth and prominence. Now Chell Holdings has collapsed and Edward is dead. As George searches for the sense in his unexplained life - from stifling childhood on a Norwich housing estate to precarious prosperity in the City - he must also cope with the mysteries of the Caradon Hotel and its odd proprietor, Mr Archer.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a haunting, unusual, and beautifully written book, 20 Aug 1999

By A Customer

This book is above all beautifully written, but also utterly engrossing - I read it in two sittings. I found myself completely drawn into the 'autobiography' of George Chell who, thanks to his tycoon uncle, progresses from a council estate in Norwich to the world of thrusting, Thatcherite success in the City. The central theme - of people who are social 'trespassers', daring to venture beyond their sphere - is brilliantly delineated. It cleverly contains the idea of trespass as sin too - together with its concomittant punishment. Taylor writes very, very well - every phrase is so elegantly wrought. And the characters are very vivid - summoned up by simple but deadly accuracte idioms of speech as much as by acute observation. George's buttoned up working class mother and her dreary friends spring before us, as if on film. So does his upper middle class girlfriend, Helena, and the manager of the Suffolk hotel where George reflects on his uncle's reversal of fortune. Taylor skewers his characters, but avoids the cruelty of caricature - all the characters are rounded, and all give themselves away. The tone is plangent, and Orwellian but with a lot of humour too, and at times 'Trespass' reminded me of Jonathan Coe's 'Its a Carve-Up' in the accuracy of its satire and the scope of its ambition. This is very fine stuff - a novel of eerily accurate social history, as well as being both a satire, and an absorbing, page-turning mystery. I can't recommend it enough.

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