Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

by Bruce Robinson

Book Overview

Meet thirteen-year-old Thomas Penman. Growing up in a bizarre household of eccentrics, including a mother and father who wage a silent war against each other. Thomas downs his first drink, smokes his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0747542376
• ISBN13: 9780747542377
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Thomas Penman is a great kid, just glad he's not mine

I was wandering through Blackwell's Books in Oxford the summer of 1998. These pie-shaped eyes were glaring at me as I walked past the stacks of new arrivals. One look at "Thomas" and I had to read it. While I was in Oxford studying WWII, I found myself rushing through school work so I could immerse my last waking hours reading of Thomas' adventures. Usually my loud guffaws were met by enquiring roommates at the door dying to know why I was dying of hysteria. When I arrived home from England, I promptly suggested that several of my male friends read this. They found Thomas to be a very cool kid. Its crude and rude, but it is also sweet and tender. Enjoy...

A raucous yet tender romp

The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman may be peculiar to those who have forgotten that bizarre landscape of wide-eyed, hormone-driven adolesence through which we all passed, but to this reader the rites of passage facing the 14 year old have rarely been so candidly captured. Thomas Penman has strange behaviors, but as his creator Robinson relates them, they all serve as seeds to explain with great wit and empathy the results of Thomas' coming of age. This is a wonderful little book that reads rapidly (as in difficult to put it down), entertains us with outrageous situations, then ties a series of clues to the Everyman question of Who Am I and How Did I Get Here? into a deeply touching finale. These characters are unforgetable - everyone of them from the main character, his best friend Maurice, the Vicar Potts, the psychic Olanda, the radiantly drawn Gwendolin, and of course Walter his Grandfather. A wonderful excursion and addition to the READ THIS List for teenagers. Suggestion: Don't let the language in the first chapter throw you off course: it is there for a reason!

Unusual and amazing

I have read many coming-of-age novels, but never have I seen one that combines so elegantly the awkwardness of growing up with the complete obliviousness of this awkwardness by the rest of the world. Thomas will be a character that will stick with me for a long time to come.The narration is a great balance of discussion and description. Not a single word was wasted. Take some time out of your busy schedule to read this book. Not a single minute will be wasted.

Wonderful

Don't be fooled by the curious cover and the blurb on this book. The real message Robinson puts across is of love, in all of it's greek meanings. The book is about wonderful love but is tinged with tragedy. It also covers areas such as pornography and dubious bowel control, and does so highly amusingly and integrates these subjects into the whole mystery.This is for anyone who loved Adrian Mole and Catcher/Rye.

Would-be Writers Beware

Writers with ambitions and pretentions should avoid this book: it will instantly humble and perhaps shame you. Your manuscript will be relegated to the bottom most drawer never to be scanned again. Robinson's sense of language is out of the Lawrence Sterne school of masterful logomachy. The humour alone will produce spasms in remote and special places; scatology has never been as well served. Thomas Penman, however, is EveryKid and his thoughts, desires, and deeds are illuminated by Robinson in a manner reminiscent of a coal fire on a blazing grate. Shadows and sudden lucidities inform the book and the room.I was wholly "taken" with this book and the construct of the grandfather is brilliant. Religion, fortune telling, village life, sodden schools, shaky marriages, even the elements are handled with exquisite care in words and phrases you writhe to have thought never mind written.I think it is impossible to overpraise this text; anyone with an ear for language will exult in Robinson's accomplishment. There are academics who could [will] spend the next three decades deconstructing this text for a career.What I need to do is begin a re-reading, and now!