Thomas Penman grows up in a house where “there was a constant smell of meat cooking” and his grandfather “rode the toilet like a horse, facing the wall, and crept around in the attic with his penis out.” This is the first page, so you know the book is going to be good. And it doesn’t disappoint.

There are secrets in the house. About Thomas, but he doesn’t learn that for a while. His grandfather, despite his creeping about and massive pornography collection is perhaps his only confidant in the place. He’s kind to Thomas, and always tells him the truth.

Thomas soils his pants willfully and daily – until he decides to stop. Adolescence comes quickly. “One afternoon he was out drowning flies when he realised he was in love with Gwen Hackett.” And as Thomas matures, stops pooping his pants, making bombs, searching obsessively for his grandfather’s porn collection, Gwen Hackett, against all odds, comes to love Thomas.

Things are complicated in the house and between his parents. Tomas eventually learns the secret they’ve been keeping from his, just as his grandfather nears death and his relationship with Gwen takes a turn.

This is a wonderfully good and searingly serious and funny coming of age story. ( )

Thomas Penman is a 13-year-old with "big ears and an unwholesome characteristic." who lives in a large, dilapidated house in Broadstairs, Kent, with his extended family. His grandfather, Walter, is the only one with whom Thomas has any sort of dependable relationship. Sadly, "Walter was extremely old and full of cancer".

The first chapter is an extended depiction of Thomas's rebellious nature and it also introduces us to the girl of his dreams, Gwendolin Hackett. "Gwendolin was beautiful, stone blond with sexy teeth, lips like the bit after a knot in a balloon." When love is finally consummated, Thomas knows ecstasy but it is soon followed by tragedy mirroring events his grandfather endured during WWI.

Of all the bonds that tie the family together, love is not the main one. Instead rage, guilt, anger and resentment are foremost in this dysfunctional family. There is also a dark family secret to be uncovered.When Thomas finally uncovers the truth we learn why these people seem to take such great satisfaction in annoying, ignoring and abusing one another.

Of all the characters within this book Thomas's father, Rob, is almost certainly the best, a wonderfully comic creation."In Rob's lexicon of jurisprudence capital offences were myriad: you could get hanged for almost anything...... Endless streams tramped to Rob's scaffold, Communists, trade unionists, the Labour Party -- he hanged the lot of them, and it wasn't even 7 AM."

The book is set in 1959 so memories of both World Wars are still reasonably fresh but is also an age when families struggled to speak honestly to one another about anything important, particularly to children. It is against this background that Thomas must himself come of age. He is endlessly snooping and lurking about the house trying to uncover secrets but he also has an unhealthy interest in explosives, cigarettes and pornography, something he knows that his grandfather has a vast collection of.

Robinson does not flinch from showing us the full awfulness of boys' sexual fantasies which some readers will undoubtedly find distasteful. There is even a whole chapter entirely devoted to excrement. However, running beneath all laddish humour there is a serious theme, that of a pubescent boy's attempts to make sense of his bewilderment surrounding sex and love, illness and death, without adequate parental guidance or experience.

Even as a male (admittedly one whose own teenage years are now only a distant memory) I found a lot of this book's humour made for uncomfortable reading but perhaps its greatest strength is that Robinson was able to sustain this rude and anarchic tone throughout. A piece of relatively enjoyable escapism but one I suggest will have a rather limited appeal. ( )

Interesting . . . but not sure I got the humor or followed all of the peculiarities. A good read - well written - and luckily short. ( )

By the same person who wrote the screenplay, "Withnail & I". I loved this book for the distictive writing style and the author's ability to combine humour and pathos simultaneously. Who else would describe the shape of a woman's head as "suburban"? Just a typical, throw n off adjective that I can't imagine any else every using, but it Robinson's book you know just what he means. It's a wonderful coming of age story. The cover photo is worth the price of the book :-) ( )

This is the hilariously touching story of an eccentric 1950's British working-class family told through the mind of an extremely odd thirteen-year-old boy. If you have read or seen the film version of Butcher Boy, you'll have a great feel for this equally bizarre family of Brits. The book takes you through Thomas's first drink, first cigarette, and his sexual obsession with the young Gwendolin, but it's the completely strange collection of family members that fill up this novel. Thomas's Grandpa Walter is a frail figure who is delicately balanced just this side of death for much of the book. Thomas, as a true teenager, is fixated on Grandpa's seemingly imminent death AND his extensive pornography collection. Much of the book is quite dark, as the parents marriage seems to be coming apart, yet, at the same time; the reader has no other viewpoint of the family other than from this rude, crude, and awkward young boy. One very funny scene is when Thomas believes his grandfather has died in the night and he sneaks to his bedside to place coins over the eyes of the still living Grandpa. Walter lives a little while longer, the parents continue to have serious problems, Thomas has constant problems in school and trying to figure out his desires for Gwendolin, but the novel rolls on in its darkly humorous fashion. This may be an acquired taste in fiction, but, if you're ready for it, Peculiar Memories is disturbingly enjoyable.

(5/01) ( )