The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

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Summary: Missed opportunities
Review: . Thomas Penham searches throughout the novel, for his grandfather's amazing collection of pornography, for the girl of his dreams, for the code word bluebells, finally for his place in the world. From explosions to bodily functions, dissolving marriages to World War I, Robinson has it all in this novel, yet there is a huge problem; I never once cared for any of these characters. From the dying grandfather to Thomas himself, a fairly repulsive twerp whom Robinson tries to save by giving him the soul of a poet, there was not one character here who brought about any kind of emotional response and reading about characters you don't care about is always a chore.

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Summary: Memories is a good, if disturbing, read
Review: An old man, a boy and his feces make Memories peculiar.

Thomas Penman, in Bruce Robinson's The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, has a bizarre problem.

He leaves steaming piles of his own feces hidden all over his house. He buries the "Shakespearean potatoes" under couch cushions, behind clocks, in cabinets and once, in a pinch, in his schoolmate's hat.

After reading Robinson's Peculiar Memories, it makes sense that this is Robinson's first book and that prior to this he wrote and directed movies. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay, The Killing Fields. Were Peculiar Memories a movie, surely it too would be up for an award because it is a compelling read from beginning to end, if for no other reason than that it is so peculiar.

Intermingled with a touching, albeit weird, story about a boy and his grandfather, is a story about a boy obsessed with porn, a girl he is beset with and parents constantly in the middle of a row.

Unfortunately for the sweeter parts of the story, it's the nastier parts that stick with you.

Thomas lives with his grandfather, Walter, and communicates with him mostly through Morse Code. Their conversations are mostly one-sided because Thomas' machine is the only one that receives, as well as sends, messages. It was Walter who taught Thomas Morse code, a skill he learned in World War I.

It was in WWI that Walter became ill through an unfortunate turn of events that ended with the top of his head being blown off.

Since his brains had been shot out of his head and shrapnel was embedded in his belly, one might think Walter would have died. But he managed to live for 17 days - because maggots ate away the rot in his body - until Germans found him. After moving Walter, the Germans performed an experimental procedure on him, shoving his brains back in his head and placing a metal plate on the top of his skull. This miraculously saved his life.

Back in the United States, Walter managed to live a fairly normal life, with his hair carefully combed to cover the shiny metal plate on his head. Soon though, the wounds in his belly lead to fast-spreading cancer, and with it, impending death.

With Walter so close to death, Thomas finds himself driven to find the key to the cabinet where the old man keeps his collection of pictures of naked women before his grandfather dies and the treasure is lost. Thomas glimpses the photos for a glorious instant and he starts to see what sicknesses Walter's war injury has spawned.

Walter, possessive of his porn, knows that Thomas has been prying and tells the boy that he is occupying himself with the wrong secret. It is with this revelation that the real adventure of The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman begins and the mysteries unfold.

Robinson writes with great description, maybe even too much at times. He creates a story that is a quick read but that ends a little too neatly. The love story that winds its way through Thomas' struggles at home is just a little too cute and not very believable.

Despite these things, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman works because it is hard not to turn the page and see what sick thing Thomas does, finds or buries next.

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Summary: in breif...
Review: i enjoyed this book from start to finish (also check out the movie "the killing fields" which robinson adapted to screenplay and his own screenplay "withnail and i" )

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Summary: A little too much excrement for me
Review: I was expecting a comical masterpiece. After page one I slowly became dissapointed and realized I was not getting one. However, page one was the best, especially when the grandfather of the protagonist is "riding the toilet"! This book would probably be admired more by male readers as it is a comming of age story about Thomas. It was enjoyable reading about the bond he and his grandfather had...as well as how the wife treats the father. Different. Actually, the term "disfunctional family" would discribe Thomas and his kin.

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Summary: Thomas Penman is a great kid, just glad he's not mine
Review: I was wandering through Blackwell's Books in Oxford the summer of 1998. These pie-shaped eyes were glaring at me as I walked past the stacks of new arrivals. One look at "Thomas" and I had to read it. While I was in Oxford studying WWII, I found myself rushing through school work so I could immerse my last waking hours reading of Thomas' adventures. Usually my loud guffaws were met by enquiring roommates at the door dying to know why I was dying of hysteria. When I arrived home from England, I promptly suggested that several of my male friends read this. They found Thomas to be a very cool kid. Its crude and rude, but it is also sweet and tender. Enjoy...

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but ultimately disappointing
Review: I've read a half dozen reviews of The Peculiar Memories and expected a laugh-out-loud rollicking, absurdist farce of a novel. And parts of the book do indeed live up to the advanced billing, particularly some of the early "soiling" scenes. But, as another reader has noted, a transformation takes place midway through, and instead of an eccentric, socially inept, pornography- and munitions- obsessed adolescent, Thomas metamorphoses into a successful lover and a refined and emotionally balanced individual. This is not nearly as much fun. I found the love affair with Gwen to be fairy-tale implausible and somewhat cloyingly portrayed, and few of the other characters emerge as fully formed persons. The ending is appropriately downbeat and Thomas prepares to move on with his life, but by then the damage has been done and the story begins to wear thin. Though well written and certainly not a waste of time, The Peculiar Memories doesn't remain true to Thomas as we first encounter him.

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Summary: Laugh Out Loud Funny
Review: In its over-the-top sections, this book is hilariously funny. Thomas involves himself in downwardly-spiraling adventures that seem to have no possible good resolution. (Compare Thomas to Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim.") The trouble is, Robinson rehabilitated Thomas over the course of only a few months. From a child and young adolescent obsessed with an "awful cargo" of excrement in his trousers to a budding antique and antiquarian book dealer is too much of a leap. (And how is it that Thomas is an expert on the writings and life of Charles Dickens when his spelling is so bad that he confuses "anaemia" and "enema?") The grandfather, too, goes from hanging his testicles over the banisters to a kind of dying sage. This novel is best at its scatological and pornographic worst. It becomes flatly sentimental elsewhere.

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Summary: elegantly written book
Review: The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is an elegantly written book which deserves praise. This book remind me of Mahfouz's "Palace Walk" and Kamal's childhood though in a complete different setting. What really amazed me is the details of the childhood experiences that the author has put through - we all can identify ourselves with Thomas since we all have gone through some of the same experiences. Through out the book we find the deep undercurrent of love between Thomas and his grandfather. Both Thomas and his grandfather are not the model charatcers that every parent want their kids to look up to still they have their own charm which attracts the best looking girl to Thomas.
I wish Bruce Robinson (the author) was a little bit more mature but still there is no denying of the fact that this is a fantastic book. The language is sometimes a little offensive but again that is part of childhood.

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Summary: Adrian Mole with an edge!
Review: this book is very funny and actually very clever. one look at those big, bulging eyes on the front cover and i had to read it. i was intrigued and fascinated by this book throughout, it's in my top ten and it begs to be read. buy it and prepare to laugh out loud, just don't read it on the bus, they'll think you're crazy.