David Hughes (1) (1930–2005)

Quick, intense novel about a man with no redeeming features, an ex-army chap who after an unexpectedly early retirement comes home with a burning itch to grind everything around him under his heel. This finds its outlet partly on his long-suffering wife and teenage daughter but primarily on the elderly couple who had taken his home on a long lease shortly before his retirement. He sets about driving them out of the place (and if necessary out of the world) by any means available within the show more law and some without it. There are some funny duet scenes with the Major's dimwit batman as we soon realise he is not just bad but completely mad. He falls into a strange and rather touching relationship with a neighbourhood widow, is recruited by the police to drive some locals out of their homes and develops an obsession with the Swedish au-pair which leads to his demise. Great novel! show less

Hughes’s The Major (1964), The Imperial German Dinner Service (1983) and The Pork Butcher (1984) are sharp, economical, original novels that pack an intellectual and emotional punch.

This is a sex farce that retailed for two shillings sixpence in 1961. It’s not a disagreeable book – the moral of the story is for god’s sake don’t marry someone before you’ve slept with them – and it’s polished and witty so far as it goes. But nor is it the kind of book on which literary show more reputations are made. show less

An anthology of 22 short comedic pieces, I picked this up on impulse at a UBS, because I'd never read any of the authors before (correction: I've read Wodehouse) and there were more than a couple names here that I'd often felt like I should have read, but hadn't; I was afraid they'd be weighty and, you know, deep. So here was my chance to read their work without a lot of emotional commitment.

Almost all of the stories here were excellent. As in any collection, there were a few clunkers: I show more found the ending of V.S. Pritchett's piece abrupt and nonsensical. Elizabeth Bowen's and Muriel Spark's pieces left me flat.

The really great stories out-weighed those though: Wilde's The Model Millionaire was my favorite of the book, with Saki's Byzantine Omelette and Robertson Davies' The Xerox in the Lost Room close behind. Oh, and A Piece of Pie by Damon Runyon had me laughing at the truly cunning ending. Stories by Dorothy Parker and James Thurber had more of an emotional edge; the humor from these stories came from a darker, cynical view.

All in all a truly excellent collection; I've already bought a collection of Saki's work based on what I've read here, and I'm looking forward to reading more by some of these authors. show less

The personal is political in this short but intense novella which invites comparison with Handke's The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, although Hughes is a more traditional novelist who gives us plenty of insight into the Major's inner life, unattractive as it is, tinged with a certain dark humour. But in both cases the main character reflects his post-war society and its discontents.