Fairness

Chronicle of Modern Twilight #5

by Ferdinand Mount

This ingenious and inventive novel—nominated for the Book Prize Long List for 2001 from the award-winning author of Jem (and Sam)—at once comprises an autobiography of Aldous (Gus) Cotton, an English civil servant with breathing problems and chronic sexual learning difficulties, and an erratic history of modern England. It is also and more so the story of Helen Hardress, the serious, slim, blond young woman who quickens Gus’s pulse when they first meet in Normandy one summer in the early 1960s as she will, off and on, for the next twenty years. For no one’s life is quite the same once Helen Hardress has passed through it. Least of all, that of the long-pining Gus. “Reading Ferdinand Mount is as much fun as pink gin.”—Michael Gorra, New York Times Book Review “Fairness is funny, touching, picaresque, decked out with eccentric characters, improbable, artful and, rarest of all, unfailingly entertaining.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World “A quick, witty read with resonance.”—Baltimore Sun

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939. For many years he was a columnist at the Spectator and then the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. In between, he was head of the Downing Street Policy Unit and then editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He is now a prize-winning novelist and author of, most recently, the bestselling memoir Cold Cream. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Siobhan Markwell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly. Words fail.

[Paddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Is tediousity a word? Critics I admire (e.g., Michael Dirda of the Washington Post) loved this book. I am a total fan of the Brit Lit faux autobiographical genre that takes readers across era with a set of characters who include a neurotic narrator, his/her object of unrequited longing, and odious foils with personality tics. I would take C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers novel sequence to a desert island. If that's not available, I'll take Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Margaret Drabble's mid-career novels. A.S. Byatt's trilogy Virgin in the Garden, Still Life,and Babel Tower. Even A.N. Wilson's Incline Our Hearts and Bottle in the Smoke. But Fairness does not deserve a spot on the shelf. How many times should an author employ the word "tarmac," for example? I finished it, but it wasn't the promised romp that's "as much fun as pink gin." Of course, I'm allergic to gin, so that should have been a clue.