D J-Taylor

Too little, too late | 10 March 2007

issue 10 March 2007

Aldous Jones, the hero of Gerard Woodward’s heroically odd third novel, has sunk into a decline. His wife dead, his only solace the bottle, the retired art teacher sits in the family house in north London brooding over relics of his married life and watching outgrowths of potato tuber lavishly uncoil from one of the kitchen cupboards. None of his three children seems much help: journalist Juliette, who lives in Holland Park with a quiz-obsessed political correspondent, occasionally steps round to nag; unforthcoming Julian works on the Channel ferry to Ostend; anthropologist James has recently married an Amazonian tribeswoman.

With its fragmentary allusions to the London Evening News and the Falklands War, A Curious Earth eventually displays a grounding in the early- to mid-1980s. Its preoccupations, though, are entirely private. Piqued by Juliette’s diagnosis of his failure as an artist, Aldous determines to break out of his rut.

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