Small Holdings

by Nicola Barker

A comedy of errors featuring a mixture of quirky characters. A group of gardeners in a park in Palmers Green, North London, find themselves in crisis as an important meeting with the council looms. The author's collection of stories, "Love Your Enemies", won the David Higham Prize for Fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, British Literature, 20th Century, Literature

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Nicola Barker is an English writer.
Nicola Barker’s eight previous novels include Darkmans (short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden Prize), Wide Open (winner of the 2000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and Clear (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004). She has also written two prize-winning collections of short stories, and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in East London.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Correspondents #6

Look MJ

Do I really want to read about a writer (WHO IS ALWAYS THE FUCKING AUTHOR) struggling to write a novel (WHICH IS ALWAYS THE FUCKING BOOK THE AUTHOR IS WRITING) then overcoming his block through some tedious personal contrivance (ALWAYS BASED ON THE AUTHOR’S BORING LIFE) and publishing the book to nationwide acclaim (EMBARRASSING WISHFUL THINKING)? The problem with a hall of mirrors is the reflection being infinitised has to be something beautiful. The infinite recursion of a man tugging his Thomas does not good literature make. So please. I am telling you this for you own wellbeing. DO NOT WRITE ABOUT A WRITER WRITING ABOUT A WRITER WRITING ABOUT A WRITER, AD INFINITUM. No one will want to read the sluice of spunk splattered on your feeble mirrors. Do what I do. Write whimsical and emotional narratives about whimsical Londoners. Better than tugging your tugboat forevermore. I say this wishing you love and prosperity,

Nicola

Previous

[Antonomasia]

[3.5]
It's getting kind of difficult to review Nicola Barker because it's just her sheer Nicola Barkerness that I love. And I like her writing so much that again I find myself turning to one of her books as a breather or recovery from something else (in this case the intense inner dialogue of Confessions of a Child of the Century).
But I only know one other person - and then only on this site - who's also a fan, so I get too caught up in trying to explain why in general I like her work. In a way that I just wouldn't with, say, Terry Pratchett. Former comfort-reading of mine, which almost everyone loves. (She's not actual-lolzy like him, nor does she write in a particular fantasy universe, but she does have a distinct world of odd characters who are taken seriously and yet not.)

This book in particular, then. Phil is a mild-mannered gardener in an Outer London park; in the run-up to a meeting on which everyone's jobs depend, his already bizarre colleagues go increasingly, sometimes violently nuts. The plot has something of the absurd pace and general ridiculousness of Tom Sharpe, but with the characters' feelings and fate given rather more weight.

I enjoyed Small Holdings pretty much as I expected to, but if I were more objective the rating may be a little lower. There are a couple of PC-type issues I can't be arsed writing about right now, there's the odd vocab misfire (a gardener wouldn't call a sunflower a bulb in metaphor, I'm sure) and in the last chapter one or two actions that don't fit the characters. The first two of the three chapters are better for the sort of surreal serious fun I like so much in Barker's books. Occasionally conversation slips inauthentically into the authorial voice, and I'm not sure the narrative voice always fits Phil's character, but because I like that voice so much anyway, I didn't mind at all.

Barker rarely gives interviews, but this quotation is often mentioned when she is profiled: 'There are writers who exist to confirm people's feelings about themselves and to make them feel comforted or not alone. That's the opposite to what I do. I'm presenting people with unacceptable or hostile characters, and my desire is to make them understood." Yet that is exactly why I often feel so much at home (i.e. "comforted or not alone") in her books.

[Till Raether · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book is from the era when people thought you could subvert racial stereotypes by using and exaggerating them, there's really no other way to explain the descriptions of Saleem and Wu.

If it weren't for that, this would be a clean 5-star-book for me.

[Sophy H · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hmm this was majorly disappointing, especially as I really like some of other Barker's work.

I read this over the course of yesterday and on my night shift last night. It felt like Barker was trying way too hard to be quirky, kooky and off the wall. The characters were all bat shit crazy, the plot completely nonsensical with glorified descriptions of violent acts and injuries and animal abuse.

I think maybe Barker was going for something radical and experimental but it just didn't work at all for me.

Utter bollocks if ever I've read some! Thankfully it was short.

[Pádraic · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Barker but this isn't up to her usual level. Great insane characters, sure, but the first-person perspective protagonist here is just not very good, his introspection neither convincing nor interesting. It's not really very funny either, like her stuff usually is. Skip this one unless you're a rigorous completionist.

[José Pereira · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has hints of the dynamism, verve, and merry uncanniness of her later work. Barker did a lot of polishing meantime, but the continuity is obvious. Cool to see.
The characters are striking as usual; but Barker’s ineffectiveness makes them more silly than zanily inspiring.

[Bodil · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a rather strange, but well-written book about some odd characters responsible for a park in London. I am not quite sure of how the story ends, but have decided to hope that it is a happy ending.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bizarre comedy of errors...short and strange.