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The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
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The Northern Clemency (original 2008; edition 2008)

by Philip Hensher

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8033227,247 (3.6)69
Fiction. Literature. HTML:In 1974, the Sellers family is transplanted from London to Sheffield in northern England. On the day they move in, the Glover household across the street is in upheaval: convinced that his wife is having an affair, Malcolm Glover has suddenly disappeared. The reverberations of this rupture will echo through the years to come as the connection between the families deepens. But it will be the particular crises of ten-year-old Tim Glover??set off by two seemingly inconsequential but ultimately indelible acts of cruelty??that will erupt, full-blown, two decades later in a shocking conclusion.

Expansive and deeply felt, The Northern Clemency shows Philip Hensher to be one of our most masterly chroniclers of modern life, and a storyteller of virtuosic
… (more)
Member:Robert3167
Title:The Northern Clemency
Authors:Philip Hensher
Info:Anchor (2008), Edition: 1st, Kindle Edition, 757 pages
Collections:Your library, E-Book
Rating:****
Tags:Contemporary Fiction

Work Information

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (2008)

  1. 30
    The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (KimB)
    KimB: Another very well written novel with a familial tension base. Set in Australia.
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» See also 69 mentions

English (31)  Swedish (1)  All languages (32)
Showing 1-5 of 31 (next | show all)
A chunky family saga set in Sheffield starting in the 70s and ending 20 years later. A definite start but a meandering dribble of an end. Interesting enough as it went along. The parents and children of two neighbouring families have each of their lives periodically investigated and laid out. Middle class life in a northern English city in the 70s and 80s. There's not much more to say about it. ( )
  Steve38 | Feb 11, 2022 |
Wow. Really long. My kind of book - meandering British fiction set in the 1970s and 80s, but oddly misanthropic, despite the happy ending. ( )
  laurenbufferd | Nov 14, 2016 |
A brilliant book and one that is very evocative if you remember the seventies and eighties. ( )
  Litotes | Aug 27, 2015 |
The Northern Clemency begins in 1974 and follows two families living in Sheffield, England for the next twenty years. The Glover family holds a party, to which many in the neighborhood are invited. When Katherine conceived of the idea, it was with the assumption that the empty house across the street would have new owners, but it isn't until later that the Sellers family arrives from London to take up residence. Over the years, the two families become more entwined as they experience the changes brought by those two eventful decades, from the miners' strike to the changes caused by their children growing up and beginning life as adults.

I love novels like this, where ordinary people live ordinary lives, relationships strengthen or fail under adversity, children struggle through adolescence and find a place in the world, events swirl around them, some affecting them greatly, others barely noticed as they go about their lives.

For the most part, this was an excellent book. Hensher writes with compassion and understanding for the weaknesses and desires of his characters. It's only at the very end, when the least fleshed-out character behaves oddly and is treated unsympathetically by the author that I felt my interest flag a bit. It's like the author needed an event, for something more dramatic than the usual family crises, when the novel's strength lies in just those mundane affairs and relationships. Still, this was a solid novel and I look forward to reading more by this author. ( )
2 vote RidgewayGirl | May 1, 2015 |
I really wanted to like this book--it's just the sort of thing I normally enjoy, but somehow I never warmed up to it. There are some good moments and some interesting insights, but I couldn't bring myself to care that much about the characters, and I couldn't shake the feeling that the author didn't much care for them either. Hensher's prose is fine, but the structure of the novel worked against it, I thought, letting characters or plots lapse so long that their impact diminished, or introducing elements that seemed like they were going to be pivotal, or at least important, and then just vanished. ( )
  savoirfaire | Apr 6, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 31 (next | show all)
Although Hensher has set The Northern Clemency in an introverted (if not Schoenberg-loving) middle-class suburb of Sheffield where the mines and steel mills might as well have been in London for all most people knew of them - I can vouch for this because I, like Hensher, grew up there; he and I went to the same comprehensive school - he is neither brave nor blithe enough to ignore the tug of history entirely.
added by Nevov | editThe Observer, Rachel Cooke (Apr 20, 2008)
 
Hensher's epic novel is set in Sheffield and spans the rise, fall and return of the vol-au-vent as a social accessory. In the opening scene, timorous hostess Katherine Glover hands round plates of nibbles while her teenage son Daniel lolls on the sofa leering at the female guests, who are perturbed by his ill-concealed erection. By the end of the book it is the mid-1990s: Daniel has settled down and established a modish restaurant in a redundant forge, where the starters come speared to a foil-wrapped potato.
added by Nevov | editThe Guardian, Alfred Hickling (Mar 29, 2008)
 
Hensher is a brilliant anatomist of familial tension and marshals his large cast of characters deftly. He has an impeccable eye for nuances of character and setting, and the details of Seventies food and decor are lovingly done: the mushroom vol-au-vents, the white wall units with brown smoked glass and the gold-tasselled sofas “glowering at each other across the drawing room like a pair of retired rival strippers”.
 
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For Zaved Mahmoud
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'So the garden of number eighty-four is nothing more than a sort of playground for all the kids of the neighbourhood?'
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:In 1974, the Sellers family is transplanted from London to Sheffield in northern England. On the day they move in, the Glover household across the street is in upheaval: convinced that his wife is having an affair, Malcolm Glover has suddenly disappeared. The reverberations of this rupture will echo through the years to come as the connection between the families deepens. But it will be the particular crises of ten-year-old Tim Glover??set off by two seemingly inconsequential but ultimately indelible acts of cruelty??that will erupt, full-blown, two decades later in a shocking conclusion.

Expansive and deeply felt, The Northern Clemency shows Philip Hensher to be one of our most masterly chroniclers of modern life, and a storyteller of virtuosic

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