Saucy Sailorette (Amazing Disgrace - James Hamilton-Paterson)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	Amazing Disgrace - James Hamilton-Paterson
Date:	10/02/08 (211 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: hilarious

Disadvantages: none

SHARP SHARK

MARITIME MOLL

GAY GOURMET

WACKY WATERWOMAN

NAUTICAL NONSENSE

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Whatever; Gerald Samper is back, the selfsame that jumped onto the literary stage in 2004 when James Hamilton-Paterson published the novel Cooking With Fernet Branca (see my review Lethal Liqueur) and took the reading public by storm, not only the English one, meanwhile the book has been translated into 21 languages.

Amazing Disgrace is the sequel, as you may have experienced yourself it's better to be wary of sequels of highly successful books, it has happened more than once that the second book doesn't hold a candle to the first, let's see what is the case here. Amazing Disgrace starts where and when Cooking With Fernet Branca stops, Gerald is still the misanthropic, curmudgeonly British expat living on a lonely hillside in Tuscany raging against his fellow country people when he encounters them on hols in Italy, the experimental chef dedicated to cooking exotic meals like vindaloo blancmange, cuckoo sorbet and badger Wellington (with hunting dog paté), the recipe for the last dish is included, the preparation described in detail so that the interested reader can cook it for themselves.

His only neighbour Marta is still missing, his recurring thoughts of what might have happened to this uncivilised, soul-destroying witch from Eastern Europe with her Mafia connected family provides some slight underlying tension, will she ever come back, if so in which condition, if not, why not and what will happen to her house? Another minor narrative strand is Gerald's research project on Mr and Mrs ProWang's Pow-r-TabsTM bought off the Internet to find out what is behind the promise of penile enlargement, the term priapism is now part of my vocabulary. The third strand is Gerald's endeavour to get into contact with a famous director (Gerald adores opera) whose biography he wants to write.

Is there no main plot at all? Well, kind of. The main part of the novel deals with Millie Cleat, the sportswoman whose biography Gerald has just finished. He's a ghost writer for inane, illiterate and imbecile sportspeople, unfortunately a very successful one, he can rage against them but he needs them as they pay for his extravagant life-style. Millie, however, is the limit, he's had enough, he can't go on! She's a monomaniacal, mad one-armed (a shark bit off the other arm) grandmother who's just broken the record for round-the-world single-handed (!) sailing, while doing so she crossed the path of some research ships mapping the ocean floor thus destroying their scientific work. As if this weren't enough, after her triumph she becomes Queen Neptunia, the head of an 'envirospiritual' group that treats the ocean as a 'sentient entity'. When she holds court, she sports a prosthetic 'aquariarm' with live fish swimming inside.

Michael Dibdin wrote in a review on Cooking With Fernet Branca, "The plot is highly ingenious, completely wacky, and largely irrelevant." I can underwrite that this is true for Amazing Grace, too. What then does the story make worth reading? It's the way it is told. Hats off to all translators, I wouldn't be capable of doing the job, the text is so full of puns ("Discretion is the better part of velour" or "a yachtsman dying peacefully in his sloop"), hints, allusions, innuendos to things British that someone not familiar with the country and its culture can't get all of it.

I find Amazing Grace very British for another reason as well and that is Gerald's gayness (gaiety?) In Cooking With Fernet Branca his sexual leaning wasn't clear, at least not to me, he came over as camp but ended in Marta's bed, that puzzled me, in the sequel he's openly gay. Have you ever noticed that British humour nearly always covers the subject homosexuality? I don't think you have because you can't compare if you don't know foreign languages. Take homosexual hints out of Monty Python and you'll get a much slimmer version!

I made a survey among the regular contributors to this site who're of foreign origin covering Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, the common agreement is that in the literature of their home countries the subject is indeed not dealt with as extensively as it is in British literature, it's not awkward or embarrassing, it's just not interesting. Why that is so is for sociologists to study and comment on.

The finale is breathtaking, two catastrophes of apocalyptic dimensions occur, wonderful!

Who should read Amazing Disgrace? Everyone who cherishes utter nonsense on a high intellectual and linguistic level. If you are a lol type and easily embarrassed you should refrain from reading the novel in a train, bus or the tube, you may come over as inane and imbecile yourself. I haven't got the problem as I'm an IG (inner grinner).

Highly recommended.

(787 words)


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Faber
288 pages
RRP 7.99 GBP
first published in 2006

Summary: Gerald Samper's new adventures