A Knot Garden

by Geoff Nicholson

This is a crime novel with a humorous twist in which the bereft wife of a dead man offers five hundred pounds to each person with whom he had recent contact, to investigate his death. The author's previous novel, Street Sleeper was short-listed for the Yorkshire Post first novel award.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Geoff Nicholson was a British novelist and nonfiction writer. He was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Essex.

The main themes and features of his books include leading characters with obsessions, characters with quirky views on life, interweaving storylines and hidden subcultures and societies. His books usually contain a lot of black humour. He has also written three works of nonfiction and some short stories. His novel Bleeding London was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Prize.

Reviews

[Jason Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Knot Garden, by Geoff Nicholson, is a book he wrote himself in his own words, ostensibly. He uses many words, enough to fill, more or less, 196 pages of a trade-size paperback that I found in a used bookstore in Menlo Park, CA. Feldman's Books, if you're ever in the area.

A quick word about that bookstore: it was perfect. The floors creaked, the shelves crowded and were crowded, I looked for many of my favorite authors, and they were adequately represented. A lot of these are writers who's books you'll only find in used bookstores. Or should I say book shops. Or should I say book shoppes.

Cozy, in other words, and so is A Knot Garden, in that it feels like one of those English Country-Side Murder Mysteries, and it is one, but it is also not one. Knot one!

Another quick word, this time about English Country-Side Murder Mysteries: has anyone ever considered just how callous they all are, the whole genre, where a human life is just a prop to compel the telling of a tale. Death is not mourned in English Country-Side Murder Mysteries. Murder is not what's immoral in these books: it's only immoral to not investigate, to not find out whodunnit.

No different A Knot Garden. Murders occur, and are almost beside the point. The point? The telling. The telling is different-- instead of one Old Woman or Odd Man from Another Country, there are a dozen or so folks telling the story, each in their own chapters, in their own words. If there is a main character, it's the widow, and she doesn't even have a chapter of her own. Or maybe the murder victim, who does get a chapter of his own.

Nicholson handles each character well enough that they each have different voices, but not blatantly so, and each is unreliable, but not overly so. That they are unreliable is not enough to treat the reader to a puzzle. They're just knots. You see what I did there.

The thing is, Nicholson is just a good writer. Everything I've read by him has been well-written and a joy to read. Plot, Character, Theme: they're all well and good, but not sufficient, in my opinion- nor even necessary, if you like the kinds of books I like to find in cozy old book shoppes.

[Sean Hennessy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The one star is for the (very) few times this book made me smile. The rest? Nah, I wouldn’t bother if I were you.
I bought in a charity shop for €1 and it’s going to recycling now as my small effort to prevent anyone else from wasting their valuable time on it.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have recently re-eread this after a twenty year+ gap, my reaction to it I think was the same (helped by the fact I couldn't remember what happened at the end). I found it a well written, easy, compelling read. A good introduction into the world of Geoff as his books generally include some wierd and obsesive characters, as this does.