Publisher's Synopsis
'Here, with deadpan Swiftian irony, Sisson traces the progress, or regress,
of a lower-middle-class homme moyen sensuel impoverished by every material
and spiritual loss that contemporary civilisation can inflict. It so
frightened the literary agent to whom it was confided that he declined
point blank to have anything to do with such a book.' Spectator
Christopher Homm 'was a pattern of amiability when he fell flat on the
gravel'-- dead. This is his story, tracing him back through the estates,
meat pies, love affairs and snickets of his life, including his military
service in India and his inconsequential employments in the War's
aftermath, to the ill-starred moment when 'Mr Homm climbed the stairs' to
look in on his wife, in whose womb Christopher, for a little time yet,
'crouched in his blindness'.
Published a quarter of a century before Time's Arrow, Sisson's
black comedy with its reversals is told with what the Sunday Telegraph
called 'incisive prose style and superbly sardonic wit.' The places share
the grim reality of Sisson's own early years, which is not to say that the
novel is autobiographical, only that the author's shoe soles were worn by
the same pavements as Christopher Homm's, and he may from time to time have
passed him in the street, with a vertiginous sense of recognition.
'Sisson's masterpiece. This "negative narration" is a striking technical
achievement. It also has a powerful emotional effect, endowing Homm's
arbitrary sufferings with the ineluctable logic of predestination.' The
Times
'Certainly no one who cares about good writing can afford to ignore this
book.' Guardian
