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The Northern Clemency | 
| Author: Philip Hensher
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $16.17
You Save: $10.78 (40%)
New (39) Used (10) Collectible (1) from $11.99
Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 497
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 608
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 1.7 x 0.2
ISBN: 1400044480
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781400044481
ASIN: 1400044480
Publication Date: October 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008: The Northern Clemency begins at the perimeter of a late-summer party, amidst a din of neighbors gossiping one moment and navigating awkward silences the next. But once you encounter the Glover family--in particular, their languidly handsome teenage son Daniel--there's no turning back. The story that follows calls to mind novels by some of our best-loved family chroniclers--John Updike and Jonathan Franzen, to be sure, as well as Ian McEwan and Anne Tyler--and Hensher wrestles with the familiar notions of love and fidelity in ways that are appreciably unpredictable. His characters observe themselves and the ones closest to them in earnest, revealing facts and fallacies of their ordinary lives that make them extraordinarily real people to the reader. Hensher's style (which earned him a spot on the Man Booker Prize shortlist) is among the many qualities that make this novel shine. It's wonderfully paced with language so beautiful and brutally honest that you'll find it hard not to start furiously underlining passages, particularly those about the city of Sheffield, whose families witness "the last phase of its industrial greatness" in 1974 and begin to experience the intensifying class wars that ensue. Though finely tuned to this point in time, and the following two decades, The Northern Clemency rings with the universal truth that family makes no sense, and yet makes all the sense in the world. --Anne Bartholomew
Product Description
The award-winning author of The Mulberry Empire brings us a sweeping chronicle of ordinary lives profoundly shaped by both the subtleties of everyday experience and the larger forces of history.
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.
These lives unfold against the vividly rendered backdrop of twentieth-century England at the dawn of the Thatcher era: prosperity for some and disenfranchisement for others, which will have a drastic impact on both families.
Expansive and deeply felt, The Northern Clemency shows Philip Hensher to be one of our most masterly chroniclers of modern English life, and a storyteller of virtuosic gifts.
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| Customer Reviews:
Ordinary lives.... December 27, 2008
Shauna King (California)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book was a bit hard to get into and you have to make an effort to sit down and get into it, but in the end it is worth the effort. It is the story who of two families that are neighbors in a Sheffield, England suburb-the Sellers and the Glovers. Over three decades, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s the book follows the day to day events of these two families, both the adults and the children. For some the minute of these seemingly ordinary events could be boring, but once I got into the story and the characters I was pulled in and found it an engaging read. It is not a book built around sex or violence, but the day to day lives of real people. What makes the book engaging is how the reader follows the lives of the characters and witnesses them progress, mature as their views change. For this reason the book maybe more interesting to those of us over forty, who have seen similar changes in ourselves; then again it would be a more important read for those under 30 so they know what to expect. The book is a bit long at over 700 pages and I did not like the structure of having no chapters, it made it hard to find a good stopping point; but maybe that was the authors point? Life offers no stopping point? Overall rating is a solid 4 stars.
 Ordinary life made extraordinary December 5, 2008
M. Feldman (Bowdoin, Maine, USA)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
Don't let some of the words used to describe "The Northern Clemency," words like "epic," "rambling," or "stream of consciousness," discourage you from taking up this wonderful novel. It is none of these things. Certainly it is the complicated and intricate story of two English families, a story that is set mostly, but not entirely, in Sheffield, and extends from the Thatcher years to a time not far from the present. The members of the two families, the Sellerses and the Glovers, total nine characters, each of whom is gradually but fully developed, so the novel does, at first, feel like a Russian novel, except that there is no handy list of characters inside the front cover for consultation. So it's best to read this book when you have a little time, and slowly you'll be drawn in, until you can't put the book down. The novel does not ramble. It is intricately plotted, and even when it ranges as far abroad as Australia, its events seem natural and inevitable. As for "stream of consciousness," no, no, no. "Ulysses" it isn't---except in the sense that the writing is wonderful. In some ways, it will remind you of a John Updike novel in its evocation of the humble quotidian beauty of life in a suburb where people eat Coronation Chicken and fish pie, shop for groceries at the Gateway, and buy their children's school uniforms at Cole's. What's unusual about this novel is its sense of mystery. The two couples at the center of the novel, Katherine and Malcolm Glover and Alice and Bernie Sellers, have marriages that are complicated but somehow familiar in their arguments, joys, and disappointments. But who can account for the ways in which children spin away from their parents in ways unpredictable and strange? How do parents produce children whose only links to each other seem to be their last names and their DNA? It happens all the time, of course. With the phrase "So the garden" the ending of the novel circles back to its beginning. When I finished reading, I turned back to the opening pages, and in looking at the names of the characters, whose fate I now knew, I realized that I would read this book all over again.
interesting family drama during the Thatcher Era November 17, 2008
Harriet Klausner
13 out of 18 found this review helpful
In 1974, the Sellars brood leaves hip London for suburban ennui in Sheffield in the inappropriately named South Yorkshire as they trek to the north. The two Sellars sisters, reticent Francis and extroverted Sandra are concerned that life in the burbs will prove boring as the former loves music and the latter loves swinging London.
Their neighbors, the Glover family consists of two parents and three kids. Patriarch Malcolm is outraged when he finds evidence that his wife Katherine is having an affair. As for the children, bookworm Jane conceals from everyone she is writing a novel; Daniel's brain consists of one icon sex with any carbon bearing species; and the youngest preadolescent Tim is friendlier with snakes than people.
One decade later, the kids are away from home either at universities or working. The empty nest syndrome is compounded with employment issues for the older generation as their hobs die and the new economy begins to shape everyone. Into the nineties, the children as adults live around the world, but come home as often as they can seek solace.
This is an interesting family drama that showcases two families during the Thatcher Era. Each of the ensemble cast is fully developed as readers see them all from multiple perspectives. Although the story line is extremely passive, fans will relish this deep character study of two generations struggling in different ways to survive the Conservative period, a time of technology and dramatically changing globalization (Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat comes to mind although much of his treatise occurs after the events of THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY) in which the older generation feels hopelessly lost and left behind and their offspring disillusioned and unhappy.
Harriet Klausner
Less gormless than it seems November 15, 2008
Steve Benner (Lancaster, UK)
31 out of 35 found this review helpful
"The Northern Clemency" by Philip Hensher is an oddity, that's for sure. Following the doings (or, more accurately, non-doings) of a couple of families living in the suburbs of the Northern England (former) steel-making city of Sheffield, from the early 1970s into the 1990s, it is presented almost as a stream of consciousness, hopping from person to person or family to family as it follows its own particular narrative threads from scene to scene. It is hard to really grasp just who (or what) is meant to be at the centre of this epic rambling tale. Perhaps it's not the characters, or the places themselves, so much as the periods, especially the mid 70s and also the Maggie Thatcher years (especially the period of the Miners' Strike) which are quite effectively evoked, although sometimes a little out in the fine details.
The book is organised as just five chapters (or four and a half, if you take the author's numbering literally) which together span a massive 700-odd pages of narrative, with the action largely centred in Sheffield but also spilling out into London and, in the later pages, Sydney, Australia. Although born in London, Hensher himself spent his school and adolescent years in Sheffield at about the time portrayed in the first part of this book and it is easy to believe that some of this may indeed be semi-autobiographical. If so, one cannot help feeling that the author's memory is rather less than perfect, though, and also that the story is influenced as much by literary expedience as it is by actual experience. Parts of the tale are, if not wholly surreal, then nevertheless somewhat dream-like and much of it left me feeling very unsettled indeed. And while I recognised some aspects of the places and times in which I also grew up, there are also large chunks which are entirely unfamiliar to me and which I simply do not recognise at all. Or else are simply too stereotyped to be believable as anything other than cyphers.
Ultimately, I suspect, the book is about nothing so much as the ordinariness of everyday people (pointed up through the unstated but implicit observation that even "ordinary" people can have something quite extra-ordinary about them if only one looks carefully enough). And although nothing much really happens in this book (and some of the happenings are left frustratingly unresolved, or else simply fizzle out in unexpected and disappointing ways) it is easy to be drawn in and to be drawn along with the flow, simply to experience that flow, rather than out of any great desire to carried somewhere in particular.
Which, I suppose, makes it a lot like life itself.
A clever and engaging slog on ordinary life... November 11, 2008
D. Kanigan (CT, USA)
92 out of 100 found this review helpful
The story is set in Sheffield, an industrial city 200 miles outside of London. It is told over 3 decades (1970's to 90's) and is centered on 2 families who live opposite from each other on same street. Malcolm and Katherine Glover and their family (teenagers Daniel and Jane and 10 year told Tim) were all born and raised in Sheffield and are portrayed as a dysfunctional family. Malcolm works for a building society, gardens in their backyard in his spare time and partakes in civil war re-enactments. While his wife Katherine decides it's time to get out of the house and take a part time job in a new florist shop - where she eventually falls for the owner. Their oldest son Daniel is handsome and spends his time in pursuit of girls. Jane is bookish and dreams of being an author and writing poetry. While young Timothy has an obsession with Snakes. In contrast, the Sellers' family is comparatively normal and is adjusting to the move to the decaying city of Sheffield from London.
* The story is dense and thick on ordinary life. At 597 pages, this is not a breezy, page turning romp. Henser takes us inside the day-to-day life of each family and the relationship between the two families and their children. The book is dense with details of the daily lives of its characters - and it brings color to what goes on behind closed doors of the daily life of middle and working class Britons - - sharing marital problems - - teenagers going through adolescence - - neighbors trying to keep up to their neighbors - - families pretending everything is ok when reality is something altogether different - - gossip - - brutality of kids in school mistreating new kids and on and on. Normal, regular life - shared colorfully in minute detail and as some reviewers coin Henser's "forensic eye for detail and exactness." Here's an example:
"Bernie was gritting his teeth: he was stuck between lorries, thundering along at a frustrating ten miles an hour below the speed limit, boxed in by faster lines of traffic solidly flowing to the right. He felt like a box on a conveyor belt."
* This book tests your reading muscles. The book is separated into 5 sections with the story jumping around between families and individuals and then jumping forward in time - not fully filling in what happened in the gaps but enough to keep you connected, fully engaged and turning the pages.
* The story is deeply introspective and gets you in the mind of the principal characters. Hensher has piercing insights into his characters and how they get through and cope with the day-to-day struggles of life - you become part of the community and the character's individual lives - the secrets, the misunderstandings, the dramas - and you see that those that should be so close as kin are so far away from truly understanding each other. Here's a passage about Jane on a family trip to the country:
"But Jane's pleasure was being ruined by the noises and silences in the car. Her father's concentration on the road had a different quality of silence to it, compared to Tim's dense, bewildered concentration, or the quiet amusement Daniel was extracting from the situation. She wondered what her owned pained silence sounded like from outside - perhaps very much like sulking."
* The book is beautifully written sparking full spectrum of emotions within the detail of the hum drum lives - laughter, sadness, distress, frustration - among hundreds and hundreds of minute details - an insider's diary of people's lives jumping from one character to the next. The author's brilliance keeps you slogging through this slow moving muddy river chugging along at 15-20 pages at a crack then setting it down - taking a full 2 weeks to finish.
The book closes with Daniel (now an adult) speaking to his wife -
"What time is it?" Daniel said, then looked at his watch. "My God, I've been sitting here for three hours."
"Did you drop off?" Helen (his wife) said.
"Don't tell me off, I've got nothing much to do today anyway, said Daniel."
"What are you reading?" Helen said coming over. "What's it about?"
"Oh, I don't know," Daniel said. "It's sort of about people like us, I think."
Yes, I too have been sitting for hours (and hours and hours) slowly turning the pages and reading a book about people just like us.
I enjoyed the book. Put your hip-waders on and take a plunge through this clever, warm, amusing, every-day life swamp.
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