Crème anglaise

by Kate Clanchy

« Géant de la littérature recherche jeune homme pour pousser sa chaise à roues. Logé, nourri, chambre individuelle à Hampstead. »
Quitter l'Écosse pour la très chic Londres et assister Philip Prys, “géant de la littérature” cloué dans un fauteuil roulant suite à un AVC ? Le jeune et naïf Strudan en rêvait. Mais entre la cupide ex-femme de l'écrivain, sa fille obèse et son étrange épouse, alors que le monde se métamorphose et les masques tombent, cet été caniculaire de 1989 lui réserve bien des surprises...
Satire sociale féroce mais pleine de tendresse, personnages de comédie shakespearienne, humour à la David Lodge et dialogues ciselés : un premier roman jubilatoire.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Novels, Scotland, Modern, Unfinished, Contemporary

330 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 25, 2013

About the author

Kate Clanchy was educated in Edinburgh and Oxford University. She lived in London's East End for several years, before moving to Buckinghamshire where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer. Her poetry and seven radio plays have been broadcast by BBC Radio. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper; her work appeared in The Scotsman, the New Statesman and Poetry Review. She also writes for radio and broadcasts on the World Service and BBC Radio 3 and 4.

She is a Creative Writing Fellow of Oxford Brookes University and teaches Creative Writing at the Arvon Foundation. She is currently one of the writers-in-residence at the charity First Story. Her poetry has been included in A Book of Scottish Verse (2002) and The Edinburgh book of twentieth-century Scottish poetry (2006)

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up in a charity shop for dubious reasons: I disliked the author’s 2019 memoir, and more especially, that when criticised, she repeatedly lied to drum up attacks on a GR reviewer and sympathy for herself. You can read about that in my review of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, HERE.

I was curious if a 2013 novel would show another side of her. I was determined to try to read this without prejudice, as if it were a novel by Anon. I failed, because so many of the characters, themes, and attitudes were familiar, but I really tried. I usually add images to my reviews. I can’t be bothered with this.

The story

Struan has a year to fill before starting a dentistry degree. He excelled at English and studied Philip Prys’ seminal play, “The Pit and Its Men”. (Fictional Philip was on the periphery of the real Angry Young Men.) Struan had nursed his father through MS to death and had a part-time job in a care home, so at the suggestion of his English teacher, he responds to an advert to be a live-in carer for Philip, who’s had a stroke.

A complex, dysfunctional, bohemian family in Hampstead, over a sweltering summer, is a world away from living in a Scottish mining town, long after the mine has closed.

It’s told straightforwardly, chronologically, and sometimes melodramatically. It felt like a soap opera, with Mills & Boon (Harlequin Romance) subplots: a list of reasons why a teen doesn’t fancy someone sets the expectation that will change.

Perhaps it was intended as satire or humour? There was a little slapstick, most bizarrely when a woman falls down the stairs, Struan tries to catch her, but somehow cups both her breasts!

There’s conflict and contrast, but I couldn’t make myself care: parents and children, couples (current, possible, and ex), rich and poor, Scottish and English Londoners and ex-Welsh (Philip and his second wife, Myfanwy), fat and slim, able bodied and disabled. There are drugs, theft, a young teacher in a dodgy relationship, attempted suicide, cold-water swimming, an ugly duckling transforming towards a swan, and a very odd 18th birthday “party”.

Eventually, many are partially redeemed. They reappraise their preconceptions and are changed by knowing Struan, “that exotic thing, an orphan”. He is one of the noble poor: clever, hard-working, deferential, kind - and skinny.

The most interesting aspect is Philip’s internal monologue. For most of the book he’s totally paralysed and unable to communicate. His thoughts and memories are muddled, and sometimes he thinks he’s watching a film of something he’s written. I’d have liked more of that (and a little less blinking, twitching, and looking at Scrabble tiles).

The attitudes

For a considerable time, all the characters are horrid, often implausibly, two-dimensionally so: they’re selfish, greedy, manipulative, and care little for those who are suffering. They all find fat people repugnant, observing revolting rolls of fat and thinking of Billy Bunter and Humpty Dumpty.

Philip thinks he can’t be racist because “he’d married one”, who he exoticises as a “clever little orchid in the greenhouse of Tehran”. There’s a gay couple, one of whom is a Jewish refugee, plus Shirin, also a refugee, so the book can’t be prejudiced, can it?!

Struan has many of the same thoughts, but is less judgemental. He’d never seen black people before, and his first impression of Shirin is “Tarty… She looked foreign, the most foreign person ever.” She’s Iranian and only nine years older than him! He thinks of “the fat lady” with her “fat hands” contrasting with “the beautiful lady”, rather than asking their names, and fixates on the exotic aspects of the beautiful lady’s eyes and appearance.

Most of these views are from the point of view of a character. If I knew nothing of the author, I’d find the relentlessness unpleasant and unnecessary (not much of it is needed for the plot), but I wouldn't necessarily equate characters with their creator. However, these views closely mirror Clanchy’s own, oft-repeated, thoughts in Some Kids, as do the exceptions: Shirin, “one of the perky clever dark girls”, is like the Very Quiet Foreign Girls Clanchy sought out and cultivated.

Oops

“In 1989, there were just crazy amounts of news.”
Maybe. But this was published in 2013, two years before Trump descended the golden escalator and three years before Cameron called the Brexit referendum. There’s been way more news since then! But I don’t blame Clanchy for failing to anticipate any of that.

Quotes

• “Her eyes were long and amber-brown, and it wasn’t just gold painted round the edge of then, the back of them were gold too, textured, like the foil from a packet of cigarettes.”

• “You can’t… be a lesbian… You’re too fat… People will just think that’s why you are one. Because you can’t get a man, you see. Lesbians don’t want lesbians like that.”

• “Thin looked better than fat, thought Juliet. It just did, and being jaundiced or dead or infertile or any of the other things they said about Celia really didn’t matter a button by comparison.”

• “Shirin’s golden hand, so elegant and clever.”

[Margitte · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure how far this novel will go, but for the right audience it might be a good read. The author developed the characters well. I just could not stomach the tedious, incredibly boring pace of the story.

It was not for me.

[Antonomasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice summery, cartoonishly typical English novel. I'm almost surprised they still make them like this... Although very few characters are English, as this book wants to show that we are a mongrel race and that Englishness is often a mixture of learned mannerisms and assimilation. Especially Englishness as perceived by outsiders such as a geeky Scottish school-leaver going south of the border in 1989 for a gap year working as a carer. It is he who is 'meeting the English' for the first time, characters like the tweedy gay Dutch-Jewish literary agent, and the Welsh Angry Young Man of the 50s and 60s, now firmly ensconced in the Hampstead literary establishment and lately incapacitated by a stroke. Similarly, the truism that most people in London aren't actually from London.

Clanchy is a published poet but this isn't an efflorescent poetic novel; according to the bio 'she has also written extensively for Radio 4', and that's where this fits in: a cosy yet not quite cloying sort of story which is a bit funny and a bit moving but not too much of either, very much the sort of thing that wouldn't get any complaints on the Home Service.

I could have ended up giving this 4 stars, and regarding it as a guilty pleasure in the way that I only seem to with books. (In films and music I've no truck with the idea). One side would call it pretentious and elitist, the other middlebrow, bland and predictable. I like a certain amount of this sort of thing but when it's the sort of thing heavily promoted by the papers yet often criticised by intelligent friends and members of the public, then there's next to no sense of individuality or connection or rebellion in enjoying it.
Or I thought I enjoyed it; reading all this new fiction recently I've found a lot more of it wanting than I expected to.

I was quite prepared to forgive the cliché of yet another Hampstead tale if it was fun, but there were too many niggly little faults for me to rate Meeting the English any higher than 3. Things like choosing the production date of a fictitious British New Wave film as 1969. The peculiar choice of surname spelling: Prys (Phillip is not a man who ever suited associations like prissy or fleur-de-lys) instead of Pryce or Price - and then its use by a proud Welshman to suffix fictional placenames that should end '[pr]ydd'. I think politics and linguistics would trump this particular vehicle for his egotism. Then there are the narrative's uneven assumptions about the reader's knowledge: for instance that they would know 'Laura' means Ashley (I confess my brain automatically filled it in in context before I realised the word wasn't there) yet shortly afterwards, although we're now in the thoughts of a Scottish character, we must be told that Princes Street is in Edinburgh.

I loved Phillip's opening rant about Salman Rushdie (which cantankerously made a good point that in current British publishing, ethnic diversity among writers from privileged backgrounds makes it easy for remaining class and regional divisions to be ignored). Then the plot almost silenced the most entertaining character. His actress-turned-property-developer ex-wife Myfanwy is at least fairly ridiculous. But too many of the comic scenes needed to be dialled up a bit (Why aren't comic novels as funny as they used to be? Someone who knows more about this should write an article) and others with potential were too bland. I suppose I'd been hoping for a grown-up version of Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga...

And then there's the way the narrative talks about 1989. Sometimes those paragraphs are written as if they're aimed at 20-year-olds with low general knowledge, though most of the readership of a book like this would probably remember the year. These sepia factoids sometimes triggered nostalgia, but by making everything seem longer ago than it was, the feeling was more often a queasy sadness. I'm sure you don't need me to repeat The Smiths' line. From the news, it did seem in 1989 that the future was going to be bright and amazing...The echoes lasted for a long time: until 2001.

A nice but fairly unremarkable book which passes the time well enough; probably as ephemeral as the Aztec Camera poster on the teenage son's bedroom wall.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poet Kate Clanchy was born in Glasgow but lives in London. Now – in the wake of September’s historic Scottish independence vote – seems a good time to revisit her debut novel, with its theme of an inexperienced Scottish teenager travelling down to England to take up a new post as nurse to a literary lion.

Are Scotland and England really that different? Seventeen-year-old Struan Robertson seems to think so. London in the late 1980s feels like an utterly foreign place to him. Clanchy shifts naturally from one character’s point-of-view to another’s; a close attention to voice also shows in her recording of speech patterns, some of which approach dialect.

Struan seems very much in the vein of one of Alan Hollinghurst’s or Hanif Kureishi’s young protagonists. This is a canny commentary on 1980s culture and British identity, even if at times it can feel passé and obvious. It will be interesting to see what Clanchy comes out with next.

(See my full review at Nudge.)

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an opportunity to read a copy of Meeting the English. This book was a lovely surprise. I knew nothing about Clanchy or her book when I requested it from Netgalley, but the story sounded interesting. It turns out that it was published in the last year or so in the UK and I gather will be published shortly in North America. Set in the late 1980s, Meeting the English depicts an 18 year old boy -- Struan -- who moves from a small town in Scotland to look after a semi-famous playwright in London who has just had a debilitating stroke. And Struan then has to contend with Philip the playwright's family -- including an ex wife, current wife and two young adult children -- and all their dysfunction. As I've described it, the story doesn't sound particularly scintillating or original. But it's not the story that makes the book delightful; it's the writing and Struan's quirky point of view -- mostly a voice of clarity and odd compassion amongst this spoiled group of people. I gather that Clanchy is a poet, and what she brings to her writing in this novel are moments of brilliant observation -- for example, a passage setting out Struan's thoughts about his own father's illness and death, or Struan's comparison of Philip and his illness to a turtle and its shell (you'll have to read it to understand the comparison). But none of this is told melodramatically or bleakly. No -- in the tradition of some of my favourite English writers -- it is deadpan, often humorous and completely unpretentious. Lovely little novel. I have already marked Clanchy's upcoming book of short stories as "to read".

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. A tongue-in-cheek, satirical account of lives privileged and not, told through the eyes of a green young man from Cuik, a bright young girl who strives to be thin, and her grasping mother, among others. This is a brilliant book, a study of England as it was in the year 1989, a wry, crisp account of the times.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meeting the English is not, and never claims to be, a full-scale sociological study of the British cultural fusion of London. And yet. The dynamic, perhaps distended, certainly widely distributed set of individuals who the novel collects as "the English" - viewed through a young Scottish man's eyes - certainly stand as quasi-representational figures of the imaginary English nation. And honestly, from my reading anyway, while this is certainly a symbolic vehicle for discussions, it limits the novel's development as much as it lends it a certain coherence. The differences between characters were simply too schematic and rendered them stocky, almost pre-determined. For the strength of this book is in its disavowal of stereotypes and its visionary drive to imagine the possible richness of lively identity within those ostensible types.

Fundamentally, this tries to be a story about the melancholic yet moving interactions between people: through illness and death, through familial fractures, and through international exchange and flows. And it's quite compelling once you relax into it. While the novel began initially to resemble something by, say, Louis de Bernières - inoffensive, patently English but with an international outlook, and skillfully told - to my surprise and delight I also found that Clanchy's book has teeth. Characters are genuinely unsettling; there are darknesses to match the light. Drug use is accepted, not confronted, and questions of sexuality, bodily image, and societal pressures are handled skillfully and with great subtlety. I never felt the urge to abandon Clanchy's hands, but by the end the novel pays back the attention and the time spent with it in spades. My only complaint is a perhaps too-cute narrative decision at the end, but that feels rather petty.

To summarize: this is an enormously capable novel that, without blowing anyone's socks off, is deftly able to examine complexities in contemporary English identities. It's not a perfect novel, nor perhaps even a great novel (whew! the weight of expectations alleviated, it becomes possible for the story to breathe!); instead, it is a very good book indeed.

[Um mar de fogueirinhas · Rating 1 out of 5]

A 17 year old goes to take care of a writer he used to admire and who had a stroke. It should be interesting. It just isn't. I'd expect more in depth of the idyosincrasies of the Scottish/English, of the age difference, of the social class, of anything. It left me waiting all the while, and bored to tears while at it.

[Chris Lilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully crafted, humane, funny, tender. Such a very, very fine piece of writing.

[Maya Panika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary Giant seeks young man to push bathchair. Own room in Hampstead, all found, exciting cultural milieu. Modest wage. Ideal 'gap year' opportunity.
This was a surprising novel in many ways: a pleasant, heart-warming read, and not at all what I was expecting, coming as it does from such a famous, multi-award winning poet like Kate Clanchy (Slattern, What Is She Doing Here?: A Refugee's Story). Clanchy's poetry has weight, and this novel is, on the surface, not the least bit weighty or Important. Meeting the English is a gentle, slow-moving tale in which very little happens; an easy read about a high-achieving, nice lad from Cuik who takes the job of carer to a famous writer he has studied and admired, on the advice of his pretentious English teacher, to up his CV and smooth the road to Oxbridge. Predictably, Struan finds a gap year in Hampstead far more strange, exotic and foreign than if he'd made the trip to The Andes, Sri Lanka or Indonesia like his middle class peers. But then, the plot isn't really what Meeting the English is about; this is very much a story of characters and character development, where selfish, thoughtless people grow and become more human without even really noticing. But this is not a worthybook, or even ostensibly deep; it is a quietly, highly entertaining novel about a loveable character that also happens to be full of depth, keen insight and thoughtful observations on humanity, and in that regard, it is very Kate Clanchy. The point of setting it in 1989 seems a puzzling one, until the very last line, when all becomes clear.

[Karen Purcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up because of the upcoming referendum and it seemed pertinent.

Really well worth reading. Funny, naughty and very evocative of the 80's (my era!). Complex relationships of well drawn characters and a strong story that twists and turns and leaves you thinking and uncertain of what decisions the characters will make next. Not that it is a thriller, its not, it's just a story of a few months in 1989.

But her short story expertise makes this her first novel a spare, precise and enthralling read - especially for anyone who's been a teenager, remembers the 80's or wonders how we manage to misconstrue one another (the Scots and the English) so much!

Kate is Scottish and lives in England so she's well place to know!

[Gin Jenny (Reading the End) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I pronounce this book PERFECTLY REASONABLE. I might have liked to be fonder of some of the characters, and I might also have liked Struan and Juliet to end up in happier situations than they did, but generally I find this book to be a reasonable representation of what people mean when they say "this is a book."

[scarlettraces · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely and beautifully written (one reason for reading novels by poets, especially ones as good as Clanchy). also sly and witty, thereby making it three of my favourite things.

[Lisa of Hopewell]

I learned of this book via this post: https://annabookbel.net/six-degrees-o...

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The London divorced family at the centre of this dark comedy are met by an Iranian second wife and a young Scots lad.

In 1989 a playwright has a serious stroke and as the months go by his squabbling family brings him home from hospital and engages a caregiver. Each person goes his or her own way and we see them change over the summer. The tale contains acerbic social comment on towns with shut coal mines, European dictators, property prices and growing up, among other aspects.

Praise to the author for a strong focus on a person with serious illness and the care involved, while keeping up a brisk pace and stretching all the other characters. The book won't suit everyone but if you want something with more depth than chick-lit, you might well enjoy the read.

[eb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this SO much! The story of a principled, innocent young man from Scotland who moves to London to care for a literary lion who's suffered a stroke, it's witty, humane, and surprising. Clanchy never lapses into cliche. The kindly teacher who encourages Struan turns out to be self-congratulatory and a little creepy; the angry ex-wife has her reasons for fury; the beautiful current wife is cheerfully amoral. I wasn't surprised to learn that Clanchy is a poet—not because there's a lot of horrible LYRICISM going on here, but because the language is so precise and the images so fresh. I do feel the ending was too tidy, but otherwise, what a perfect book.

[Kathy Ding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty sure the cultural differences between Scotland and England were not enough to fill a whole book and really, the differences Clanchy wrote about were purely socioeconomical. Had she written Struan to be a wealthy teenager from the Highlands doing a trip to London or Hampstead, there would have been 200 pages fewer of differences. The main character actually claims that Hampstead was more different from Scotland than Thailand. Give me a break!
The title and the exaggerated cultural divide aside, the story and characters were interesting and well written. I finished reading in record time and really enjoyed the practicality and solemnity of Struan.

[Renata · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that the premise of the book was interesting -- a young Scottish lad moves to London during his gap year to take care of an invalid, who happens to be a writer that he admires. For me, the book just didn't deliver on anything. What he encounters is a dysfunctional family. I found it quite boring and I made it to about page 110 when I gave up. I just have too many more interesting books to read, including ones who most likely will have better and more riveting treatments of dysfunctional families.

[Corene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming book, whimsically told, about a young orphan in 1989 who leaves his poverty stricken Scottish village to take a job as caretaker for an acclaimed playwright, left wheel chair bound and mute after a stroke. A cast of characters assemble in and out of the household, each with their own agendas. It all takes place over an unseasonably hot London summer, in a posh Hampstead neighborhood and the famous park, very much giving a Midsummer Night's Dream effect to the novel.

[Sherry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cute. Not especially funny, a little bit sad. Story of a Scottish lad who goes to London to care for a not very nice author after he 'strokes out'.

The lad is brilliant, young and unsophisticated. The family and friends he meets are quite dysfunctional, but thru his actions he sets most of them on the right path.

In the end the old man has another stroke, and everyone moves on.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find this 'comedy' particularly funny. Maybe a cultural thing. The characters were pretty unlikeable for the most part, and it seemed like 90% of the 'jokes' were at the expense of overweight girls and women. It all got very tiresome very quickly. Despite all that, I still found the story engaging enough to make this a fairly quick read, so will give it 2 stars instead of 1.

[Snoakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great characters and a plot that tears along, this is a really good read. Funny in places (not laugh-out-loud but gently amusing), sometimes a little sad (but never too sad), it's an enjoyable story of different worlds meeting.

[Elisabeth Gifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent read for summer full of humour, magic and a cast of characters that will stay with you for a long time.

[Sharon Mccann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books where you don't want to begin another in case you forget this one. The last third of the book was so moving.

[Story · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable comedy of manners.

[Essie Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this. A perfectly formed and razor sharp analysis of a summer in Hampstead in 1989.

[Sam Colloff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely read. Not actually as light as you'd think, but nicely written, with well rounded characters. Satisfying.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satire of the first order - skewering the British literati, among others. Struan Robertson is a star pupil, upstanding young man, and salt of the earth person in the small town of Cuik, Scotland (in the Central Belt, as he has to keep explaining). For one year, he has a British English Lit. teacher who sees potential in him (and sees himself as a Dead Poet's Society influencer), so when he sees an ad in a literary journal for a caretaker needed for Phillip Prys, a mid-century British drama phenom, (and SOB), he recommends Struan broaden his world view and take it on. Struan, who grew up with his Gran after he nursed his father with MS until he died, has nothing else going until he applies to dental school, so he shows up at the London address and is engulfed in the domestic controversy that Philip's life has become. Phillip has been completely incapacitated by a stroke, and is at the mercy of his first wife, Myfanwy, who wants the house and security for the 2 children they had together - 16 year old Juliet, and 20-something, Jake, an Oxford eject. However, the house is occupied by Shirin, Phillip's 3rd, beautiful, young, foreign, artist wife. She has no intention of losing anything or repeating any part of her pushed-out-of-her-home refugee-from-Tehran history. Good-hearted Struan is sometimes a pawn, sometimes a patsy in this mess, but always concerned for Phillip's welfare and guided by his moral compass to do the right thing. In the milieu of selfish, spoiled, vengeful, Brits this is sorely tested, but ultimately good guys win on their own terms. A bit of a coming-of-age tale for our hero as he makes his way in a bigger world beyond Cuik, he also comes to terms with the responsibility of being morally good: "Struan wondered if this is what happened when you saved people, that you had to carry a bit of them on your belt forever, like a shrunken head." (247) With great power comes great responsibility - a lessons for individuals and civilizations both.

[Sushila Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought my copy of this book years and years ago, when it first came out, at which stage my daughter was at school (a state school, by the way), and Kate Clanchy was her creative writing teacher. Naturally I was fascinated to see what my daughter's teacher had written. However, I was a bit apprehensive, as I don't like distressing books, and I had heard that Kate Clanchy's previous published work of fiction was an award-winning story about a mother watching her child die of an incurable disease. When I started reading "Meeting the English", my fears seemed to be justified: the characters include a teenage boy whose father has died of cancer, two teenage girls with eating disorders, and a horrible old man who makes a number of mildly racist remarks before suffering a stroke. I read a couple of chapters, then gave up on the book for years. However, more recently I became very indignant when Kate Clanchy was cancelled and dropped by her publisher after a smear campaign (that apparently began on Goodreads) accusing her of being a racist. I am mixed-race myself, and I thought that Kate Clanchy was quite the opposite of racist. At my daughter's school, she helped kids of all races and backgrounds, including refugee backgrounds, to find their voice. She actually got at least two books of the kids' poems published, which would never have happened without her. So, feeling on Kate Clanchy's side as regards the cancellation issue, I decided perhaps I ought to try reading her novel again myself. What a surprise! No sooner had I got past the point where I previously gave up than the tone of the novel became cheerful, amusing, positively jolly. The formerly very unpromising elements of the book were transformed into a source of humour and quite an exciting plot. Eventually it becomes a feel-good story with a happy ending for virtually everyone. My only quarrel with it now is that it is maybe even a tiny touch too feel-good, as if every loose end has been tied in a big bow round a box of chocolates. But that is probably an unfair quibble, considering that initially I was worried that it would be too depressing. It is an enjoyable novel and well worth a read if you can still get hold of it. I am so sorry that Kate Clanchy has been persecuted and lost her publisher, and I do hope I will see a new book by her in print one day.

[Sophie Glazer · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is all about real estate,” my young daughter remarked disdainfully, after I took her to see "Howards End," and of course she was perfectly correct. In the same sense "Pride and Prejudice" is all about real estate—who will inherit Longbourn? Who will become mistress of Netherfield Hall? Of Pemberley? Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey. . . really, so many great novels are all about real estate. Kate Clanchy’s delightful debut novel, "Meeting the English," follows in this great tradition. A loathsome British novelist, Phillip Prys, suffers a catastrophic stroke, and retires to a helpless old age in his London mansion. Around his catatonic body revolve the women in his life, like planets around a cooling sun: his ex-wife, eager to strip and refinish the woodwork; his current wife, who wants to be left alone to paint her dainty Persian miniatures; his hapless, unpopular, unloved daughter, miserable in a world where nobody respects short fat people. Phillip’s literary agent and executor hovers anxiously, hoping to find the highly publishable author still somehow available behind the blank stare, and Phillip’s wastrel son shows up from time to time, to raid the refrigerator and cast a lustful eye over the goodies in the house. Phillip’s caregiver, Struan, is the most endearing, kindly, honest character of them all, but even Struan gets drawn into maneuvers over who will get that desirable piece of London property. What an entertaining farce! By the time I’d gobbled the book down, I was ready to grab a sponge and start stippling my woodwork, convinced that it really is all about the real estate.