Hawthorn and Child

I virtually never read a book twice (too many unread books in the world!), but this one might be the exception. A perplexing, sublimely written, little book, somewhere between a collection of short stories and a detective novel. Interconnections abound, but I fear I missed many the first time around. It's well worth a read (or two).

I loved this book. Once I finished it I wanted to just start from the beginning and read it all over again.

This is not a standard cop whodunit book though. If you are looking for a mystery where at the end of the day everything is all tied up and solved, this is not the book for you. This is more like tiny little capsules of peoples lives and actions strung together, sometimes with the barest of threads. When I finished the last page I had more questions than when I started the book, but in this case, that was okay.

The writing is just gorgeous, expressive, and amazingly descriptive. Even when describing something you would rather *not* have down to the last detail, it is still so clear and well written that it blunts the horror.

Books show more like this make me so happy I'm a reader. show less

Hawthorn and Child are policemen, detectives, operating in London, on the case of a big shot criminal called Mishazzo. But that is where any similarity with a genre crime novel ends. What the author presents us with instead, is a series of snapshots of lives that touch these three characters, however tangentially.

The young man in Mishazzo's employ who gets in too deep; the editor who receives a mysterious manuscript; a young girl and her first boyfriend; Hawthorn himself and his struggles with his sexuality. Sometimes Hawthorn and Child make only brief appearances, at others they are the focus. Nothing is resolved. We are left to make our own conclusions, to wonder what happened next.

Ridgway's writing is at times hallucinatory and show more dreamlike, at others economical and incisive. He makes each character speak with their own voice, always the sign of a good writer.

Some of these stories stand alone, in others there is a link to other stories. A death impacts on several characters; Mishazzo himself appears a couple of times, in other places he is a looming shadow, an unreleased potential of violence and death.

So, this is very far from a conventional crime novel and some may be frustrated by its unwillingness to tie up loose ends, to provide a pat ending. But I liked it very much and it will, I'm sure, bear repeated readings.

Recommended. show less

When it's good it's wonderful, but as with any short story style work the final rating depends on hits vs misses. The writing, though is excellent, making even the stories I didn't like well worth reading.

At times confusing but always compelling, don't expect a normal detective story and do not expect any answers. Do expect to close the book and scratch your head for a long time after you finish. Totally brilliant writing.

I'm beginning to become quite fond of this form -- a novel of inter-related stories with characters in common, chapters narrated by different characters in different voices, never quite sure about beginnings & endings, but the middle hangs together & fills in the blanks. The writing is uniformly excellent throughout the serious, humorous, feeling, sometimes quite gross police scenes. Many lines of dialogue are unidentified, but Ridgway usually leaves sufficient clues to figure them out. A second reading may prove beneficial, but I finished Hawthorn & Child (the cops' surnames) in two enjoyable sittings. {Pre-publication copy via Nook download}

An experimental patchwork that is both compelling and irritating, self-conscious and sublime. A book to admire for its technique, rather than one that invites the reader to enter and suspend disbelief. Some of the language is stunning ('The boys...pushed laughter between themselves like a pool game - angles, rocochets, trick shots.'), some is stripped back to the point of laziness. The spread of ratings so far is a fair reflection of the quality throughout. Hard to recommend, but harder to dismiss.