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The Bloater
A rediscovered literary classic, The Bloater is a rollicking hothouse novel where love and repulsion are two paths to the same abyss
Why do the only men I know carry wet umbrellas and say “Umm?” I’m being starved alive. Quick: the first bookshop for a copy of the Kama-Sutra.
Min works at the BBC as a sound engineer, and in theory she’s married, but her husband George is so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off even when he’s still in the room. Luckily, she has her friends and lovers to distract her: in Min’s self-lacerating, bracingly opinionated voice, life boils down to sex appeal―and of late she’s being courted by an internationally renowned opera singer whom she refers to as The Bloater (a swelled, salted herring). Disgusted by and attracted to him in equal measure, her dilemma―which reaches a hysterical, hilarious pitch―is whether to sleep with him or not.
Rosemary Tonks―the salt and pepper of the earth―is a writer who gets her claws into the reader with all the joy of a cat and a mouse. Vain and materialistic, tender and savage, narrated in brilliant, sparkling prose, The Bloater is the perfect snapshot of London in the 1960s.
Why do the only men I know carry wet umbrellas and say “Umm?” I’m being starved alive. Quick: the first bookshop for a copy of the Kama-Sutra.
Min works at the BBC as a sound engineer, and in theory she’s married, but her husband George is so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off even when he’s still in the room. Luckily, she has her friends and lovers to distract her: in Min’s self-lacerating, bracingly opinionated voice, life boils down to sex appeal―and of late she’s being courted by an internationally renowned opera singer whom she refers to as The Bloater (a swelled, salted herring). Disgusted by and attracted to him in equal measure, her dilemma―which reaches a hysterical, hilarious pitch―is whether to sleep with him or not.
Rosemary Tonks―the salt and pepper of the earth―is a writer who gets her claws into the reader with all the joy of a cat and a mouse. Vain and materialistic, tender and savage, narrated in brilliant, sparkling prose, The Bloater is the perfect snapshot of London in the 1960s.
135 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
65 people are currently reading
3420 people want to read
About the author
Rosemary Tonks
14 books56 followersRosemary Tonks (17 October 1928 – 15 April 2014) was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye after her conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.
Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.
Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".
Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]
Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.
Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.
She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."
Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.
Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".
Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]
Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.
Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.
She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 174 reviews
March 22, 2022
A new edition of a cult British novel from the sixties by poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks. Up until now copies of The Bloater have been rare, printed once in 1968 and only now reprinted, it was made even scarcer by the actions of its author. Tonks became deeply religious in later life and, as part of her personal mission against the workings of the devil, visited libraries to obtain copies of her earlier work which she then burned. The book itself was produced during the heyday of British experimentalism and was firmly placed in that category - it definitely reminded me of some of the other writers in that select grouping especially Brigid Brophy, although there are shades of Iris Murdoch here too. There’s a slender plot which forms a kind of comedy of manners centred on Min who’s married to the inconsequential George but being pursued by two other men, one an opera singer she nicknames the bloater – like the fish he smells and is physically overblown. Min’s struggle with the ways in which the bloater both attracts and repulses forms the core of the narrative.
Min’s an odd character, although Tonks doesn’t really do character in any developed sense, her thoughts overflow with scenes from literature, art and music, all linked to what was then firmly positioned as high culture. But Min’s cultural predilections, rather than serve as a means of insight, allow her to maintain a kind of ironic distance from her surroundings. It’s a life, or perhaps a society, in which lived experience is always inferior to life rendered in and through art. Min’s attitudes of mocking cruelty and devastating disdain set the underlying tone for the story. But this is tempered by moments of intense wit, some marvellous lines and phrases, and curious situations that resemble operatic farce, as the gout-ridden Min hesitates over her choice of suitors.
I found this an interesting book rather than an enjoyable one, and slightly mystifying at times, particularly in relation to the world it presents. On the surface the portrayal of gender, particularly relations between heterosexual men and women’s deeply conventional, reflecting the mainstream culture of England in the late sixties, an era mired in the last throes of the so-called sexual revolution and anticipating the flowering of feminism in the seventies. But Tonks’s sneakily-iconoclastic approach works to highlight the artificiality of gender, the way in which so much of what takes place here stems from the machinations of people whose sense of self, and self-expression, is rooted in performance. And Min’s callous treatment of Carlos aka the bloater, man as fish, is a fascinating reversal of the ways in which women were all too often objectified, offered up to be consumed, and frequently compared to meat or flesh. Alongside the main plotline, there are striking snippets of social and cultural history including a glimpse of the inner workings of the famed BBC Radiophonic Workshop during Delia Derbyshire’s time – Tonks had worked with Derbyshire on a creative project.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Vintage Classics for an ARC
Min’s an odd character, although Tonks doesn’t really do character in any developed sense, her thoughts overflow with scenes from literature, art and music, all linked to what was then firmly positioned as high culture. But Min’s cultural predilections, rather than serve as a means of insight, allow her to maintain a kind of ironic distance from her surroundings. It’s a life, or perhaps a society, in which lived experience is always inferior to life rendered in and through art. Min’s attitudes of mocking cruelty and devastating disdain set the underlying tone for the story. But this is tempered by moments of intense wit, some marvellous lines and phrases, and curious situations that resemble operatic farce, as the gout-ridden Min hesitates over her choice of suitors.
I found this an interesting book rather than an enjoyable one, and slightly mystifying at times, particularly in relation to the world it presents. On the surface the portrayal of gender, particularly relations between heterosexual men and women’s deeply conventional, reflecting the mainstream culture of England in the late sixties, an era mired in the last throes of the so-called sexual revolution and anticipating the flowering of feminism in the seventies. But Tonks’s sneakily-iconoclastic approach works to highlight the artificiality of gender, the way in which so much of what takes place here stems from the machinations of people whose sense of self, and self-expression, is rooted in performance. And Min’s callous treatment of Carlos aka the bloater, man as fish, is a fascinating reversal of the ways in which women were all too often objectified, offered up to be consumed, and frequently compared to meat or flesh. Alongside the main plotline, there are striking snippets of social and cultural history including a glimpse of the inner workings of the famed BBC Radiophonic Workshop during Delia Derbyshire’s time – Tonks had worked with Derbyshire on a creative project.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Vintage Classics for an ARC
February 20, 2023
I first heard about the The Bloater (1968) when it was discussed on the Backlisted Podcast in 2022. Although the discussion was very enjoyable it was a book that didn't attract me. Avant garde novels from the 1960s have not, in my experience, aged well. However when it was chosen by my book group I hoped to confound my expectations. The Stewart Lee introduction increased my hope that this was going to be a rare treat.
There's very little by way of plot. Min is married to the inconsequential George and is attracted to two more interesting men. The dynamic between Min and the men is very traditional. The men woo and Min seems obliged to resist. What does she really want? The novel's structure makes it hard to know what Min thinks or feels about anything. All the characters, especially Min, say a lot but it’s often contradictory chatter or inconsequential conversation. As the book went on I found it increasingly tedious.
The best parts are the scenes set at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (where Rosemary Tonks worked with the legendary Delia Derbyshire), and the interactions between Min and her neighbour Claudio, alas these are but a sidenote to the main "story" of Min and her pursuers.
2/5
Min works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home, other matters of the heart are making a mockery of life as Min knows it.
Min has found herself the object of her lodger's affection. An internationally renowned opera singer she's nicknamed 'The Bloater', Min is disgusted and attracted to him in equal measure. But with a husband so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off on him even when he's still in the room, Min can't quite bring herself to silence The Bloater's overtures.
Vain, materialistic, yet surprisingly tender, The Bloater is a sparklingly ironic comedy of manners for all flirtatious gossips who love to hate and hate to love.
There's very little by way of plot. Min is married to the inconsequential George and is attracted to two more interesting men. The dynamic between Min and the men is very traditional. The men woo and Min seems obliged to resist. What does she really want? The novel's structure makes it hard to know what Min thinks or feels about anything. All the characters, especially Min, say a lot but it’s often contradictory chatter or inconsequential conversation. As the book went on I found it increasingly tedious.
The best parts are the scenes set at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (where Rosemary Tonks worked with the legendary Delia Derbyshire), and the interactions between Min and her neighbour Claudio, alas these are but a sidenote to the main "story" of Min and her pursuers.
2/5
Min works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home, other matters of the heart are making a mockery of life as Min knows it.
Min has found herself the object of her lodger's affection. An internationally renowned opera singer she's nicknamed 'The Bloater', Min is disgusted and attracted to him in equal measure. But with a husband so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off on him even when he's still in the room, Min can't quite bring herself to silence The Bloater's overtures.
Vain, materialistic, yet surprisingly tender, The Bloater is a sparklingly ironic comedy of manners for all flirtatious gossips who love to hate and hate to love.
February 25, 2023
A truly funny, even hilarious, short novel I already want to read again and plan on recommending to my opera-loving inlaws. The narrator Min's voice and observations are scathing, acerbic, and an overall hoot. That narrators/characters at some level be interesting is greatly more important to me than that they be generally likable/relatable, and I find Min damned interesting.
May 16, 2022
I first heard about this book when Backlisted featured it on their podcast; at the time it was the rarest book they'd ever done, and if I'm honest, I think I was drawn to the story of the book rather than the book itself. It was written by Rosemary Tonks in the 60's, but later in life she became very religious and went around trying to destroy copies of her books. She would even take library copies out and get rid of them, as such, very few copies existed in the world. Now it is being re-published by Vintage, with an introduction by Stuart Lee, who was one of the guests on the podcast about this book. With all this in the background, I found that I was not as blown away by the story as I had hoped.
It is set in London during the swinging 60's, Min, married to George, (who stays very much in the background), is also being pursued by two other men, Billy and The Bloater, a larger than life opera singer, who she is both attracted to and repulsed by. It is very short and can be read in an afternoon, but Min is not a likeable character. It had been described as a sparkling social comedy, which sounds right up my street, and while there are flashed of brilliance, overall I was a bit let down by it. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to actually read it however.
*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*
It is set in London during the swinging 60's, Min, married to George, (who stays very much in the background), is also being pursued by two other men, Billy and The Bloater, a larger than life opera singer, who she is both attracted to and repulsed by. It is very short and can be read in an afternoon, but Min is not a likeable character. It had been described as a sparkling social comedy, which sounds right up my street, and while there are flashed of brilliance, overall I was a bit let down by it. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to actually read it however.
*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*
April 26, 2024
Ich entschuldige mich bei all jenen, die ich in U-Bahnen und Bussen durch meine vergeblich unterdrückten Kicheranfälle aus ihrer digitalen Apathie verschreckt haben sollte: Das Buch war dran schuld.
January 22, 2021
What a lark! So glad to have snagged a copy of this book from Interlibrary Loan and listened to the Backlist Podcast. Min is a classic female character in this delightful confection of the Sixties as she copes with her opera singer admirer called The Bloater ("this huge, tame, exotic man" "I personally can smell him from the kitchen...I do see that he is large and washing takes time") lusts after a coworker named Billy, gossips with friends and an inciteful neighbor ("he has property, knows everything, and occasionally tells me near-truths about myself.") She pretty much ignores her husband, George. She suffers from gout and is absorbed by her clothing, her home décor and her cleaner, occasionally her job in electronic music, but mostly is concerned with her love life. When her husband complains, "I am bewildered, and my ego falls down off her plinth." Fun to read. A closing salvo from Min: "I'm able to put up with the present only by attaching it to the future."
April 19, 2022
My interest in this novel was piqued by the Backlisted episode, broadcast when the book was out of print, but it’s now being republished and I bagged an ARC*, hurrah.
Brief, frivolous and camp, what it lacks in plot it makes up for in wonderfully quotable lines that zing off every page. Min, the petulant, perverse, catty narrator, is torn between succumbing to the persistent overtures of ‘the bloater’ - a large, malodorous opera singer - and the rather more suave Billy. Two very different types of masculinity: which to choose (the husband is a non-starter). That’s the plot; it’s of no great importance. It’s a slight novel (Tonks reportedly dashed it off in two weeks, needing to make a quick buck), more of a snack than a meal, but a delicious one. I’m fine without a story or moral edification; I was there for the dark social comedy, the highly idiosyncratic prose, the gossipy badinage between Min and her neighbour Claudio, the bewailing of men with her colleague Jenny, and the inner workings of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Rosemary Tonks was part of the 1960s British experimental wave that included Brigid Brophy, Ann Quin, B S Johnson et al, all working in / reinventing multiple media: poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction, journalism, criticism and more. In later life Tonks became a recluse, converting to some kind of Christian extremism, renouncing her novels as the work of the devil, and borrowing as many copies as possible from libraries in order to burn them. An intriguing figure in an intriguing moment in British social/literary history, when the avant-garde was embraced - and even popular (sigh).
*thankyou Netgalley
Brief, frivolous and camp, what it lacks in plot it makes up for in wonderfully quotable lines that zing off every page. Min, the petulant, perverse, catty narrator, is torn between succumbing to the persistent overtures of ‘the bloater’ - a large, malodorous opera singer - and the rather more suave Billy. Two very different types of masculinity: which to choose (the husband is a non-starter). That’s the plot; it’s of no great importance. It’s a slight novel (Tonks reportedly dashed it off in two weeks, needing to make a quick buck), more of a snack than a meal, but a delicious one. I’m fine without a story or moral edification; I was there for the dark social comedy, the highly idiosyncratic prose, the gossipy badinage between Min and her neighbour Claudio, the bewailing of men with her colleague Jenny, and the inner workings of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Rosemary Tonks was part of the 1960s British experimental wave that included Brigid Brophy, Ann Quin, B S Johnson et al, all working in / reinventing multiple media: poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction, journalism, criticism and more. In later life Tonks became a recluse, converting to some kind of Christian extremism, renouncing her novels as the work of the devil, and borrowing as many copies as possible from libraries in order to burn them. An intriguing figure in an intriguing moment in British social/literary history, when the avant-garde was embraced - and even popular (sigh).
*thankyou Netgalley
August 5, 2023
4.5, rounded down.
Surely, if I'm so wormlike they wouldn't have sacked me from school? I once told Jenny about it and she said:
"But what were you expelled for?"
"Reforming the syllabus. Stealing tomatoes. Gang warfare. Just nothing."
"Oh, that's no good. You've got to be expelled for syphilis or being a Lesbian. If possible, both."
That's an example of the type of dry drollery this slight volume excels at, and if it gave you at least a chuckle, this is the book for you. There isn't much of a plot or even character development, it's primarily a sequence of scenes in which the author sets up situations just to be able to toss off such whimsical bon mots ad infinitum. It only takes a few hours to read - and I was thoroughly charmed.
Surely, if I'm so wormlike they wouldn't have sacked me from school? I once told Jenny about it and she said:
"But what were you expelled for?"
"Reforming the syllabus. Stealing tomatoes. Gang warfare. Just nothing."
"Oh, that's no good. You've got to be expelled for syphilis or being a Lesbian. If possible, both."
That's an example of the type of dry drollery this slight volume excels at, and if it gave you at least a chuckle, this is the book for you. There isn't much of a plot or even character development, it's primarily a sequence of scenes in which the author sets up situations just to be able to toss off such whimsical bon mots ad infinitum. It only takes a few hours to read - and I was thoroughly charmed.
February 21, 2023
she's so funny it makes me sick ! huge win for insufferable bitch representivity 💓
April 2, 2022
I didn’t get on well with The Bloater. I’m usually very wary of “cult classics” but an enthusiastic endorsement from Stewart Lee persuaded me to try this one. Not a good idea, as it turns out.
The fact is, I didn’t get it. It’s quite well written and the voice of Min, the narrator, is readable enough, but frankly, I couldn’t see the point. First published in 1968, this seems to me to be a sort of late-60s Bridget Jones Diary. Min, the narrator, has a successful career in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is married. However the Workshop gets just a couple of scenes, chiefly so Min can have awkward relationships with her two co-workers. Her husband, who may or may not be having affairs, gets barely a mention. Meanwhile, Min is being pursued by two suitors – the titular bloater and Billy, whom she seems to actually care for. There’s some chat with female friends and a lot of confused angst...and I just didn’t find it funny or engaging.
Plainly, people whose views I respect really liked The Bloater. I’m afraid I didn’t and I can’t recommend it.
(My thanks to Vintage Classics for an ARC via NetGalley.)
The fact is, I didn’t get it. It’s quite well written and the voice of Min, the narrator, is readable enough, but frankly, I couldn’t see the point. First published in 1968, this seems to me to be a sort of late-60s Bridget Jones Diary. Min, the narrator, has a successful career in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is married. However the Workshop gets just a couple of scenes, chiefly so Min can have awkward relationships with her two co-workers. Her husband, who may or may not be having affairs, gets barely a mention. Meanwhile, Min is being pursued by two suitors – the titular bloater and Billy, whom she seems to actually care for. There’s some chat with female friends and a lot of confused angst...and I just didn’t find it funny or engaging.
Plainly, people whose views I respect really liked The Bloater. I’m afraid I didn’t and I can’t recommend it.
(My thanks to Vintage Classics for an ARC via NetGalley.)
April 28, 2021
"'They know' he says, with the primitive vigour of a secret Bible-reader escaping from an age of psychoanalysis."
I arrived at this quote seven pages into the text and knew that I'd finish and enjoy this slim volume. There are many rich observations and delightful turns of phrase throughout. Sometimes it's an absolutely unique description like the one quote above. Sometimes it's the sort of language games that force you to reread a sentence once for comprehension and again for delight ("He may even love me, in addition to being in love with me. In that case, it's serious, and I must behave seriously.")
But let's be honest with ourselves: you're not reading this strange, cynical, plotless dalliance because of its language. You're reading it because you found it. Somehow.
The text is inseparable from its author. Tonks was an avant-garde novelist and poet in the 1960's who became a proper recluse and religious extremist. Aside from a recent republication of selected poetry, her books were not reprinted. In fact, during her life she sought to track down all the copies of her books that she could and destroy them, convinced that they were agents of evil.
But, dear reader, she didn't get the one you're holding. And you're holding it mostly out of that sense of satisfaction. You have the unburned book, the one that Rosemary couldn't track down. And you do like the book. But mostly you like having the option to like it.
I look at this sturdy, brown hardback, sent from the University of Iowa library by courier, and I wonder whether I'm holding the only copy in the state. It's certainly the only one I could find. The university doesn't use stamps to check out their books anymore, but the last time I can see for sure it was checked out was in 1970. This being the second review written on Goodreads, it's not unlikely that the book sat on a shelf for fifty years. A wildly rare, possibly valuable, and nearly forgotten artifact of an absurd life.
I'm going to go return it now. Maybe in another fifty years, some Iowan will find it again and relish the fact that Rosemary Tonks left this particular volume unburned.
I arrived at this quote seven pages into the text and knew that I'd finish and enjoy this slim volume. There are many rich observations and delightful turns of phrase throughout. Sometimes it's an absolutely unique description like the one quote above. Sometimes it's the sort of language games that force you to reread a sentence once for comprehension and again for delight ("He may even love me, in addition to being in love with me. In that case, it's serious, and I must behave seriously.")
But let's be honest with ourselves: you're not reading this strange, cynical, plotless dalliance because of its language. You're reading it because you found it. Somehow.
The text is inseparable from its author. Tonks was an avant-garde novelist and poet in the 1960's who became a proper recluse and religious extremist. Aside from a recent republication of selected poetry, her books were not reprinted. In fact, during her life she sought to track down all the copies of her books that she could and destroy them, convinced that they were agents of evil.
But, dear reader, she didn't get the one you're holding. And you're holding it mostly out of that sense of satisfaction. You have the unburned book, the one that Rosemary couldn't track down. And you do like the book. But mostly you like having the option to like it.
I look at this sturdy, brown hardback, sent from the University of Iowa library by courier, and I wonder whether I'm holding the only copy in the state. It's certainly the only one I could find. The university doesn't use stamps to check out their books anymore, but the last time I can see for sure it was checked out was in 1970. This being the second review written on Goodreads, it's not unlikely that the book sat on a shelf for fifty years. A wildly rare, possibly valuable, and nearly forgotten artifact of an absurd life.
I'm going to go return it now. Maybe in another fifty years, some Iowan will find it again and relish the fact that Rosemary Tonks left this particular volume unburned.
February 20, 2025
4.5, really.
•
The Bloater is about a cheeky neurotic woman who guards herself from the danger of connecting with a man in a real way. She can be a bitch, but she’s just protecting herself!
What nailed the sale of this novel for me was poet and translator Michael Hofmann, who wrote a long glowing piece on Tonks, and whose literary tastes I’ve come to trust: “Writing like this is far too beautiful and accomplished to be kept off the shelf.”
I loved this so much. More than the plot, the narrative is driven by the voice of its narrator Min, her acerbic manner and cutting intelligence, and her snappy dialogues with her friend Jenny and the three men in her life. Her two main conversations with Jenny in which they discuss their affairs were my favourite parts of the book.
Sexy, sophisticated, cunty and tender, Min is intoxicating to men. She’s light on her feet and quick, her energy almost frenetic. And these descriptions of Min are also descriptions of the book: line by line it was consistently fresh and stimulating and entertaining and aesthetically pleasing. The writing is brilliant.
Also! Another thing I really liked was that these characters are not only funny to the reader, they’re funny to themselves and each other—they’re often laughing. It was refreshing. How often in comic fiction are characters being serious and miserable and cracking up at a sudden idea, image or turn of phrase in the same conversation, the way we do in life? Not often enough. It felt real. Min knows she’s being absurd.
The Bloater is for fans of Muriel Spark, Jane Bowles, Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, and Hepburn’s Holly Golightly.
It’s easily a highlight of my year so far, and I’m sure it’s going to stay a highlight.
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The Bloater is about a cheeky neurotic woman who guards herself from the danger of connecting with a man in a real way. She can be a bitch, but she’s just protecting herself!
What nailed the sale of this novel for me was poet and translator Michael Hofmann, who wrote a long glowing piece on Tonks, and whose literary tastes I’ve come to trust: “Writing like this is far too beautiful and accomplished to be kept off the shelf.”
I loved this so much. More than the plot, the narrative is driven by the voice of its narrator Min, her acerbic manner and cutting intelligence, and her snappy dialogues with her friend Jenny and the three men in her life. Her two main conversations with Jenny in which they discuss their affairs were my favourite parts of the book.
Sexy, sophisticated, cunty and tender, Min is intoxicating to men. She’s light on her feet and quick, her energy almost frenetic. And these descriptions of Min are also descriptions of the book: line by line it was consistently fresh and stimulating and entertaining and aesthetically pleasing. The writing is brilliant.
Also! Another thing I really liked was that these characters are not only funny to the reader, they’re funny to themselves and each other—they’re often laughing. It was refreshing. How often in comic fiction are characters being serious and miserable and cracking up at a sudden idea, image or turn of phrase in the same conversation, the way we do in life? Not often enough. It felt real. Min knows she’s being absurd.
The Bloater is for fans of Muriel Spark, Jane Bowles, Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, and Hepburn’s Holly Golightly.
It’s easily a highlight of my year so far, and I’m sure it’s going to stay a highlight.
July 23, 2024
A real “Oops! All Whimsy!” book. There’s barely a shadow of a plot if you squint, and instead it’s like 99% cheeky banter and pithy jokes and feather-light satire about an indecisive woman juggling/negging three or four suitors at once. My therapist would call this an “avoidant attachment style” or “fear of intimacy” I would call it “funny” and “delightful” and “it made me laugh a lot.”
September 10, 2023
Este livro não me disse nada, não gostei do plot, não gostei do enredo, enfim fui levado pela capa chamativa sem nunca ter ouvido nada sobre ele. Conclusão, não leiam livros pela capa. A escrita foi a única coisa boa do livro, e mesmo assim não foi nada de extraordinário.
May 4, 2024
great and so fun! i understand why people dislike this (i was shocked at how low the average rating was) but i just thought tonks wrote with so much wit. i’d reread over and over again just for the laughs
July 26, 2024
One of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year; made me laugh out loud several times. It’s full of witty conversations between Min and her friends, lovers, and enemies. Min’s meta commentary on their interactions were as entertaining as it gets: salty, judgy, facetious, indecorous, irreverent. She is so messy but so captivating. I am obsessed.
March 25, 2025
Thanks to Esther for this fun, electric little novel. I’d never heard of Rosemary Tonks - a fantastic name but the rest of her life ended up being very sad. The Bloater however is fab and the narrator is really sharp. She felt quite familiar to me, although I wish I had such good put downs. All the men in her life carry umbrellas and say ummm - pathetic!
January 9, 2022
The voice didn't work for me: I wasn't amused, and when I was dismayed, it was not in a fun or shocking way, but in a bored one. A shallow exploration of shallowness.
August 27, 2022
Disappointing. It seems there’s often a good reason why a long lost classic has been long lost.
July 26, 2023
What a hilarious page-turner of a book about nothing in particular!
Read
August 2, 2023Fun! Fun! Fun!
January 19, 2023
Funny, sharp, poetic, with a sly bouyancy. Sometimes it reads like Iris Murdoch on laughing gas. The descriptions are unique throughout: "The path is lined with boys fishing. The water is just as it should be, full of moods. Down at the edge here it's a transparent brown sugar aquarium with fudge-coated leaves at the bottom. Once there, it's impenetrable, white, glossy, and the fishing lines go into it at an angle and disappear. The smell of freshwater is so new."
Not very big on expository prose, however. Tonks is more about a consciousness floating in the periphery of a narrative than narrative itself. Which, given her poetic work, is hardly surprising.
Not very big on expository prose, however. Tonks is more about a consciousness floating in the periphery of a narrative than narrative itself. Which, given her poetic work, is hardly surprising.
December 6, 2022
This is a rather gentle affair, a plesant enough way to spend a couple of hours, but largely forgettable.
It is at its best when describing 1960s London. Specifically it is the story of, and narrated by, a young married woman Min, who it seems is in the early stages of estrangement from her husband George, as they so rarely see each other, and when they do, they communicate to the minimum.
Working as a sound engineer for the BBC, Min is at something of a stalemate in her life; her job no longer challenges her, and her social life is, as far as she is concerned at least, tiresome. The reader does not warm to her.
In a rare bright moment of her days, a rotund baritone singer she gets to know at work, who she names 'The Bloater' attempts to woo her.
Despite its reissue recently, I don't think it has stood the test of time very well.
This is one of those cases when the author’s own story may actually be more interesting than her novel.
Tonks was from Kent and this, her third novel of six, was published in 1968.
In 1970 though, she converted to Fundamentalist Christianity and did her best, even through the courts, to remove her novels, and much of her poetry, from sale, and the public eye generally. Following this, she lived as a hermit, refusing to use a telephone or indeed any other means of communication with even friends and family.
Almost as soon as she died in 2014 The Guardian published a selection of her poetry along with the obituary.
She had worked for the BBC, the Observer and the New Statesman, writing and reviewing. Just before she saw her light, she was at the peak of her fame, compared favourably with Evelyn Waugh.
It is at its best when describing 1960s London. Specifically it is the story of, and narrated by, a young married woman Min, who it seems is in the early stages of estrangement from her husband George, as they so rarely see each other, and when they do, they communicate to the minimum.
Working as a sound engineer for the BBC, Min is at something of a stalemate in her life; her job no longer challenges her, and her social life is, as far as she is concerned at least, tiresome. The reader does not warm to her.
In a rare bright moment of her days, a rotund baritone singer she gets to know at work, who she names 'The Bloater' attempts to woo her.
Despite its reissue recently, I don't think it has stood the test of time very well.
This is one of those cases when the author’s own story may actually be more interesting than her novel.
Tonks was from Kent and this, her third novel of six, was published in 1968.
In 1970 though, she converted to Fundamentalist Christianity and did her best, even through the courts, to remove her novels, and much of her poetry, from sale, and the public eye generally. Following this, she lived as a hermit, refusing to use a telephone or indeed any other means of communication with even friends and family.
Almost as soon as she died in 2014 The Guardian published a selection of her poetry along with the obituary.
She had worked for the BBC, the Observer and the New Statesman, writing and reviewing. Just before she saw her light, she was at the peak of her fame, compared favourably with Evelyn Waugh.
June 4, 2022
Tonks is described in her bio here as a "colourful figure on the London literary scene during the 1960's", publishing poetry, novels, broadcasting for the BBC and reems of articles for the magazines of the day. The bio doesn't mention her move to puritanical Christianity in the 1970's, and certainly of the sex positive whirl of The Bloater it seems a remarkably strange shift. The book has the columnist's way with words, it is witty, self-deprecating and often very funny - and very reminiscent of the racier side of the best 21st century chick-lit. Min - who basically is Delia Derbyshire - works for the BBC Audio department making strange noises and music. She is single, lives with a few flatmates and has a semi-regular thing with "The Bloater" a corpulent opera fan who she cannot stand and yet drifts in and out of her life mainly for sex. The book is a slice of that relationship, perhaps one where she realises she has a little more fondness for a man who - in the opening - disgusted every part of her being. Perhaps the Puritanical Christianity is on offer there, a search for actual connection that is denied? It feels very fresh, whilst clearly of its time, and there are pithy withering put-downs littering the text. It makes you want to slope off for lunch with a Barley Wine for a natter with her, which sound like success to me.
April 1, 2022
I didn’t get on well with The Bloater. I’m usually very wary of “cult classics” but an enthusiastic endorsement from Stewart Lee persuaded me to try this one. Not a good idea, as it turns out.
The fact is, I didn’t get it. It’s quite well written and the voice of Min, the narrator, is readable enough, but frankly, I couldn’t see the point. First published in 1968, this seems to me to be a sort of late-60s Bridget Jones Diary. Min, the narrator, has a successful career in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is married. However the Workshop gets just a couple of scenes, chiefly so Min can have awkward relationships with her two co-workers. Her husband, who may or may not be having affairs, gets barely a mention. Meanwhile, Min is being pursued by two suitors – the titular bloater and Billy, whom she seems to actually care for. There’s some chat with female friends and a lot of confused angst...and I just didn’t find it funny or engaging.
Plainly, people whose views I respect really liked The Bloater. I’m afraid I didn’t and I can’t recommend it.
(My thanks to Vintage Classics for an ARC via NetGalley.)
The fact is, I didn’t get it. It’s quite well written and the voice of Min, the narrator, is readable enough, but frankly, I couldn’t see the point. First published in 1968, this seems to me to be a sort of late-60s Bridget Jones Diary. Min, the narrator, has a successful career in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and is married. However the Workshop gets just a couple of scenes, chiefly so Min can have awkward relationships with her two co-workers. Her husband, who may or may not be having affairs, gets barely a mention. Meanwhile, Min is being pursued by two suitors – the titular bloater and Billy, whom she seems to actually care for. There’s some chat with female friends and a lot of confused angst...and I just didn’t find it funny or engaging.
Plainly, people whose views I respect really liked The Bloater. I’m afraid I didn’t and I can’t recommend it.
(My thanks to Vintage Classics for an ARC via NetGalley.)
July 9, 2022
"'I've got two tickets for Fallstaff Wednesday after next. Would you like to come?'
Normally I'd get up and go and look in my diary and hum and ha, and wonder if I could bear a whole evening alone with him and finally say: 'No, I'm working.' But Racquel's presence is stimulating me to a degree. I can feel the price of flesh veering up and down. Billy's calm voice can't be heard against the ponderous male silence which the B. has created. If he crooked his finger at Racquel she'd lay her shining auburn head against his chest and get herself squeezed to death. She's really begging to be battered black and blue. I've got a feeling that if I say 'No' he'll ask her, and she'll say 'Yes' and they'll--
I get up in a sudden fit of rage which takes them both by surprise, and shout:
'All right! I'll go!'" (79).
"I decide, too, that the only thing for it is to be stunned by the sheer sordidness as well. I'm glad Claudi used that word, because it's not always possible to put your finger on beastly words when you need them to set your mood" (149).
"He says the Americans try to make sex pay out more and more sex-money, like a one-armed bandit. Whereas it won't. If you're lucky it pays out love and mystery. It has a time-scale built on moods and goodness; it's this moral dimension people forget. If you grab it, or get mean, it turns to ashes. Billy says one has to be gay and in love with the work of love.
As for me, I stubbornly refuse to re-dream the good times. I'm able to put up with the present only
by attaching it to the future" (155-56).
Normally I'd get up and go and look in my diary and hum and ha, and wonder if I could bear a whole evening alone with him and finally say: 'No, I'm working.' But Racquel's presence is stimulating me to a degree. I can feel the price of flesh veering up and down. Billy's calm voice can't be heard against the ponderous male silence which the B. has created. If he crooked his finger at Racquel she'd lay her shining auburn head against his chest and get herself squeezed to death. She's really begging to be battered black and blue. I've got a feeling that if I say 'No' he'll ask her, and she'll say 'Yes' and they'll--
I get up in a sudden fit of rage which takes them both by surprise, and shout:
'All right! I'll go!'" (79).
"I decide, too, that the only thing for it is to be stunned by the sheer sordidness as well. I'm glad Claudi used that word, because it's not always possible to put your finger on beastly words when you need them to set your mood" (149).
"He says the Americans try to make sex pay out more and more sex-money, like a one-armed bandit. Whereas it won't. If you're lucky it pays out love and mystery. It has a time-scale built on moods and goodness; it's this moral dimension people forget. If you grab it, or get mean, it turns to ashes. Billy says one has to be gay and in love with the work of love.
As for me, I stubbornly refuse to re-dream the good times. I'm able to put up with the present only
by attaching it to the future" (155-56).
May 10, 2023
Intriguing and chaotic. Miss girl loves to see how the men she’s involved with respond to everything she dishes out (and boy does she love dishing out cold and unexpected meals). At first the writing was a little difficult to get into but once you’re there - you’re bound to giggle at our main girlies thought process and actions. Not the greatest book but a short and fun read overall. Also love that theres some representation of gout (work uric acid but also let’s get that treated and prevent it in the future)
September 29, 2025
it seems i have read a different book than everyone else here on goodreads; this was hilarious. I loved it and only found a couple of elements to be anachronistic (everyone wearing fur, the use of the word 'bitch'), it felt aggressively modern to me otherwise. the characters are hilarious and Min even more so. the introduction of this new edition is also really good, but the cover!!!!!!!!!! jail to the cover designer
April 24, 2022
Rosemary Tonks's 'The Bloater' is a wonderful social comedy about the sexual politics of the Swinging Sixties that is finally being republished. The narrator, Min, a BBC sound engineer who is amicably married to George, spends most of her time fending off the advances of her lodger, a rotund opera singer whose nickname gives the novel its title. She also finds herself developing feelings for her older divorced friend Billy, trading quips with her neighbour Claudio, swapping amorous anecdotes with her colleague Jenny and envying her glamorous friend Racquel.
I found this is a thoroughly enjoyable read with some laugh-out-loud comic set pieces, such as when Min finds herself laid up in bed with, of all things, gout, or when an art dealer is sent by the Bloater to deliver the gift of a still-wet painting, which he ends up passing to Min through an upstairs bathroom window by climbing on to a dustbin. ("No wonder people loathe the arts; wet paintings and humming baritones") What truly makes this novel such a delight, however, is the candour, wit, self-deprecation and sheer exuberance of Min's narrative voice.
As Min observes, "Are we fully adult, responsible pillars of society? Certainly; it's simply that we're allowed two or three safety valves nowadays, and rank silliness is one of them." This 'rank silliness' is one of the dominant notes of the novel which, for all its focus on extra-marital affairs and the supposed permissiveness of the era it depicts, remains delightfully chaste and innocent.
It was great to discover the many pleasures of Rosemary Tonks's writing and I hope to explore more of her work. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!
I found this is a thoroughly enjoyable read with some laugh-out-loud comic set pieces, such as when Min finds herself laid up in bed with, of all things, gout, or when an art dealer is sent by the Bloater to deliver the gift of a still-wet painting, which he ends up passing to Min through an upstairs bathroom window by climbing on to a dustbin. ("No wonder people loathe the arts; wet paintings and humming baritones") What truly makes this novel such a delight, however, is the candour, wit, self-deprecation and sheer exuberance of Min's narrative voice.
As Min observes, "Are we fully adult, responsible pillars of society? Certainly; it's simply that we're allowed two or three safety valves nowadays, and rank silliness is one of them." This 'rank silliness' is one of the dominant notes of the novel which, for all its focus on extra-marital affairs and the supposed permissiveness of the era it depicts, remains delightfully chaste and innocent.
It was great to discover the many pleasures of Rosemary Tonks's writing and I hope to explore more of her work. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!
June 10, 2024
Ein Aperitif: spritzig frisch, aber keine ganze Mahlzeit.
Ein weiblicher Dandy, eine Neugier auf amouröse Möglichkeiten, schwere Morgenröcke, kurze Pailettenkleider. Sehr viel Vibe. Anlehnung an Oscar Wilde und Colette, doch in diesem Roman geht es nicht um existenzielle Krisen oder dramatische Wendungen. Hier geht es um witzige Unterhaltung. Um die Swinging Sixties, allerdings ohne Revolution.
Kurzum: ein neckischer Roman, kein Meilenstein des weiblichen Schreibens und das schönste Buch des Jahres (ich habe es überall wie eine Handtasche hingetragen).
„…und Champagner zu allen drei Gelegenheiten, die sich im laufe eines Tages so bieten.“
„Mein Gott, ich fühle mich so elend und frustriert, am liebsten würde ich mich in ein lausiges altes Beckett-Gedicht legen und verfaulen. Ich hasse Männer.“
„Bei der Zeitungslektüre entsteht der vage Eindruck, dass dieses Land regiert wird, aber von wem?“
Ein weiblicher Dandy, eine Neugier auf amouröse Möglichkeiten, schwere Morgenröcke, kurze Pailettenkleider. Sehr viel Vibe. Anlehnung an Oscar Wilde und Colette, doch in diesem Roman geht es nicht um existenzielle Krisen oder dramatische Wendungen. Hier geht es um witzige Unterhaltung. Um die Swinging Sixties, allerdings ohne Revolution.
Kurzum: ein neckischer Roman, kein Meilenstein des weiblichen Schreibens und das schönste Buch des Jahres (ich habe es überall wie eine Handtasche hingetragen).
„…und Champagner zu allen drei Gelegenheiten, die sich im laufe eines Tages so bieten.“
„Mein Gott, ich fühle mich so elend und frustriert, am liebsten würde ich mich in ein lausiges altes Beckett-Gedicht legen und verfaulen. Ich hasse Männer.“
„Bei der Zeitungslektüre entsteht der vage Eindruck, dass dieses Land regiert wird, aber von wem?“
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