*The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (Knopf, 2008)

 

I had read and enjoyed King of the Badgers (another inscrutable title) by Hensher many years ago, and remember thinking that it was amusing and somewhat diffuse and inconsequential.  I felt much the same about The Northern Clemency.

Like King of the Badgers, The Northern Clemency is a big book (600 pages), a saga that follows two families in Sheffield from the late 70s into the late 90s, in jumps of five to ten years, chronicling the lives of all the family members, particularly the wives/mothers and the children (one family has 3 children, the other has 2).  It touches rather obliquely on socio-political issues like the miner's strike and the rise of Margaret Thatcher, but politics is always subverted to the exigencies of the character's personal life.

While evoked in great and authentic detail, none of the lives are particularly unique or interesting.  Hensher writes adroitly about everyday life and minor disturbances, and the stakes and subsequent drama seem rather low for a novel of this scope.  I read it with flagging enthusiasm, and while I think Hensher is accomplished, I don't think his novels are brilliant or noteworthy (that is an observation more than a criticism, for I did enjoy reading this book and felt sympathetically engaged with its world and its characters).