Behindlings

Thames Gateway #2

by Nicola Barker

Behindlings, the fifth novel from Nicola Barker, is a welcome return, both in mood and in geography, to the gothic terrain of her Impac Prize winner Wide Open. Set in parochial Canvey Island, Essex, this book is inventive, funny, unnerving, and often magnificently strange. Barker's Canvey (once dubbed "Candy Island" by Daniel Defoe) is, with its Wimpy Bar, dreary pubs, and long-cherished grudges, rumours, and secrets, a quintessentially English small town. Its emotionally damaged population is augmented by the "Behindlings" of the title, a gaggle of oddballs who follow, or more precisely obsessively stalk, the novel's enigmatic central character, Wesley. The architect of a chocolate company-funded treasure hunt, author of a pseudo-Nietzschean walking guide and the man behind the daring theft of an antique pond, he is a rather malevolent Pied Piper. Part Alvin Toffler-quoting, peripatetic environmental visionary, part immoral (and maybe downright evil) fraudster, he's also notorious for feeding the fingers on his right hand to an eagle owl "in an act of penance" for accidentally killing his brother. Barker has always had a penchant for the surreal, and occasionally here both plot and characterization can get swamped in flights of absurdist imagination. She is perhaps too fond of the elaborate simile. The clackety, clackety of the "like" and "as" of her prose style is, from time to time, a little exasperating. Despite this, her narrative is so alluringly, so charmingly odd, bristling with puzzles and etymological games and full of wonderfully, devilishly comic touches, that it's easy to ignore its minor flaws. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk

Genres: Fiction, 21st Century, Literature, Novels, British Literature, Contemporary, Modern

Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

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 2 out of 5]

Last night I finished reading Nicola Barker’s monolithic novel Behindlings: an über-manic triumph for the imagination wired on a diet of speedball and Dr. Pepper. Barker is one of the most venerated novelists of her generation, winning the Impac Award at the turn of the millennium, and has been raking in the prizes and wonga ever since.

Behindlings is a throbbing headache of a novel. Her language kept me smiling and giggling for the first 200 pages – when her talent knew no fault, when her loopy plots wrapped me in fuzzy love – but then… I hit a wall of total alienation. Barker had literally been spoon-feeding me so much brilliance, I burst. Each page became a sugary confection I was unable to swallow, lest my gut distend far and yonder.

Newcomers should try "Three-Button Trick" or "Wide Open".

[Nick Davies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm. Here is a messy review of what is a messy novel.

Pros: Frequent, but not so frequently to save the book, delightfully clever descriptions. Several of the characters were colourful and intriguing, and held my interest (others, less so). The central idea of a group of people following a mysterious bloke for various uncertain reasons was an interesting one and posed plenty of thought-provoking questions. Readable enough to get through, with a bit of a struggle.

Cons: Confusing. Strange for the sake of being strange. Over long. Too many unlikely and unlikeable characters. The denouement and explanation, though clever, left me more 'oh' than 'wow!' because I'd had to work hard and long to get there, and didn't care all that much when I reached the end.

Barker clearly is a talented writer, but this was a bit much overall. Had I not had it on my bookshelf and TBR list for over a decade I would've given up. Had it been half the length and/or half the complexity I would probably have enjoyed it.

[Lukerik · Rating 2 out of 5]

God this was difficult. I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand there are some outbursts of exceptionally fine writing, like this from chapter ten:

“Dewi chewed solemnly on a heavily-salted tomato sandwich as he peered through his living room window, his dust-iced skin zebraed by the sharp stripes of winter light which gushed, unapologetically – like hordes of white-frocked debutantes flashing their foaming silk petticoats in eager curtsies – between the regimented slats of his hand-built shutters.”

On the other hand her tricolons can descend into lists of extraneous words that obscure the text like a sort of soft sleet.

It's a unique piece of work; the only novel that's sent me to google to see if there really is a Wimpy's on Canvey (there isn't). Everything's more or less off kilter and there's a hallucinatory quality to the world in which the characters are strange visions.

And that's a problem because the characters aren't in any sense real; I just didn't care whether they lived or not. Another problem is the lack of plot. You probably thing I'm very old-fashioned, expecting novels to have characterisation and a plot, but I really think they tend to have them because that's what makes them enjoyable. This barely has a narrative.

This brings me to wonder what the point of this novel is. If anything, it appears to be about the hopeless search for meaning, both for the characters in life and for us (the reader) in the book. I don't think I'm wrong in thinking that the whole novel is a perverse piss-take by Barker. Here's an example from chapter forty-seven:

“It was impossible to see far in the soft sleet, the half-light. Perhaps God was masquerading – Ted thought, scowling – for fun or out of sheer viciousness, as some kind of cack-handed amateur artist; roped in to paint the scenery for a bad school drama; working for nothing and – by the shoddy calibre of his output – without enthusiasm; wholly intent upon making the whole dmn world int a heavy-handed caricature; a sketch; a border; a wing; a back-drop.”

Barker being God. I enjoy intellectual games in a novel, and this would have made a superb short story. Personally I found five hundred pages of having the piss taken out of me a bit much. On the other hand it's exercised my brain.

[keri. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the more confusing books I've read in the last few years, but ultimately, also one of the most satisfying; I spent the first half banging my head against the wall because there was just so much stuff going on, and the second half shouting around my fist because it was falling together in completely crazy, unexpected ways. Very enjoyable! Most definitely a great read to ring in 2008! I'd certainly look for more of Barker's books after this.

[David]

What I've read of Barker so far is intriguingly dissatisfying. There are great flashes. There is also the feeling that little of what happens makes sense to anyone but (some) of the characters. Then there are (well I suppose there must be) the frequent (is that the word I mean? reminds me too much of flyers) digressions (the Flyers won the Stanley Cup in the 70s didn't they?) and self- (well who else is going to do it, really?)interruptions. But somehow despite the nagging moments of WHY?!!! while reading, I find myself still willing to read at least the one more I currently have out of the library. I don't know.

why

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicola Barker has the playful joy in language of Nabokov. This swirling, complicated book about a perverse, grieving, and outrageous man and his many followers has an absurd quality to it, but it is terrifically rooted in the mundane. Funny, sexy, bewildering, great.

[Keri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book in Barker's Thames Gateway series, although I'm not entirely sure where the 'series' part is as the characters are different, the subject is different and the location is different. Maybe it's a British thing I don't understand. Anyway, the premise of the story is quirky and interesting. Like Wide Open, the reader enters the story where the characters pretty much know everything and it is a process to reveal it to the reader. I thought there were pieces of the story that we could have done without but perhaps that is just a reaction because I was feeling irritated with the book. See, while the action of the character and the story itself are being told, the random thoughts crossing the mind of the character is interjected. It is most irritating and, for me, detracted from the flow of the story. Additionally, many of the characters seemed to stutter quite a bit and have a problem completing their sentences. Again, distrupting the flow of the story and not really enhancing the story. I don't remember this format being used in Wide Open and it does not appear that it is employed in the third book of the series, Darkmans. Because it is not, I will continue to read the series.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was great fun. I love Barker's weird imagination - to create such a strange cult character like Wesley is a feat. The story line is linear but written like a mystery novel - you don't get all the details, there are plenty of loose ends left open to the imagination, and she builds her characters slowly and systematically. I didn't give it a 5, however, because her writing style drives me insane. Where was her editor? If she was trying for stream of consciousness, she DIDN'T nail it. The characters speak and then revise what they said - get it right the first time, Barker!! Why five adjectives when one would do? It's almost a cop-out...pick one that best fits the situation and stand by your decision. So much waivering makes me want to scream! I had to skim certain areas b/c it was that distracting. The story line itself, however, kept the book afloat. I do see why this book's ratings are NOT great...

[Staci · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book forever-ago, and I should have kept at it and focused on finishing it in a much more timely manner. But I didn't -- the book hardly kept my attention for a full chapter at a time, so I kept putting it down and going back to it every now and then. As a result, I easily confused the characters and forgot who some were all together. This woman is an amazing writer and I'm sure this book is infinitely interesting, but it is very slow (on purpose, I believe) and often confusing, which made it difficult for me to stick with it. I'm going to hold on to this one and go back and start at the beginning sometime when my schedule is less crazy and I can really focus on it. The characters are very interesting and I'd like to see how they end up. But right now, I don't have the attention span for it.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Move over Coe, there's a new favourite author in town. Barker's writing reminds me of why I fell in love with books in the first place. You read on, having no idea what's going to happen next (or, invariably, what's happening now) and, frankly, it doesn't matter because the here and now is such a pleasurable place to be, thanks to her gleefully joyful descriptions, similes and random tangents. What it never is, though, is twee, idyllic comedy: she's sufficiently potty-mouthed and downright nasty to avoid that pitfall.



And, seeing as this book predates Twitter by a good few years, there's probably a case to be made that Barker invented the whole concept. Obsessively stalking a celeb via a website - sound familiar?

[Ann M · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get into this book at all. One reviewer said it was "twee" -- good word for it.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

i found it bizarre and aggravating but strangely compelling

[Anne Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit mystified by this book (therefore found it hard to score!) There were some pages of pure delight, describing people, wonderfully perceptive comments and phrasing; gradually i got to understand more about the different characters and what they were (perhaps!) doing. There were some bits that were gruelling and disgusting, there were moments of sadness and loneliness; there were people displaying such eccentric behaviour it was both really funny and pretty unrealistic and unreal.

I remember reading Darkmans and feeling I had never read anything like that - the style was quite similar - lines with 2 words in capital letters on them; really confusing bits of dialogue and fascination about the characters and their lives. However, that book had a much more understandable plot - once you got to grips with the style it was wondrous. With the Behindlings it was more obscure, new evidence kept changing the perspectives of characters towards 'the man being followed' - clever but it happened so much I got very confused at times, and this led me to feeling fed up on a few occasions and nearly giving up on it. I'm really glad I didn't as things do become clearer by the end.

Worth reading certainly, but make sure you can give it real attention for extended periods. You will really laugh in some places!!

[David Browne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Behindlings is my fourth Nicola Barker novel, and I'm beginning to think that her books fall into two categories. First, there are brilliant books that leave you in awe of her originality and virtuoso writing. Second, there are the books that don't quite work, they're enjoyable rambling messes. Behindlings is definitely in the second category. It's about Wesley, a writer who has a weird group of follower that track him where ever he goes. These are the Behindlings that the title refers to. One of the mysteries of the book is why Wesley has this dedicated band of followers, he doesn't seem that interesting. The book has all the hallmarks of a Nicloa Barker book, multiple points of view, a plot that is all over the place, interesting characters, great writing for its own sake, but about three quarters of the way through I realised it's not going anywhere and started scanning.

[Bart Van Overmeire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lezen-for-life boek nummer 1: 'Behindlings' van Nicola Barker.

I like my books to be out of the ordinary. Luckily, I can count on Nicola Barker to deliver exactly what I want: Wesley steals antique ponds, sleeps inside horses, eats seabirds and is very keen on middle-aged librarians. So, obviously, he has a magnetic effect on people and has developed quite a following, the Behindlings as he calls them. Together they embark on 500+ pages of wicked fun.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicola Barker amazes and takes away one's breath, as always. A particularly stunning realization about this particular collision of fascinating, damaged, manic souls is that Barker crafted the idea of Followership - people physically following someone with some measure of celebrity or notoriety - in the early 2000s, well before the current dominance of social media and influencers. Prescience extraordinaire ...

[Anna Marsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

so so weird and so so brilliant. i was confused from beginning to end but the characterisation was phenomenal. this book was an assault on the senses and i would strongly recommend it if only so someone else could try and make sense of it with me. i became hooked and despite the sometimes lengthy sentences and slightly ridiculous writing style (synonym after synonym!) i never really wanted to put this down. super great and and a majorly interesting book.

[Georgia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my god this book came so close to being a DNF for me multiple times. There are some really interesting characters and an interesting premise but the prose is almost unreadable! So many hyphens going off on so many tangents, it really ruined my ability to immerse myself.
Also I got to the end still not understanding what the point of it all was.
This was a really frustrating read.

[Schopflin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Frustrating to begin with and her writing style is complex and distracting until you get used to it, but ultimately became a pageturner. 'Who are you? The Joan of Arc of the fucking uterus?'.

[Chris Smith]

I'm a fan of hers but I found this a bit tedious. It is hard to care what happens

[Andy Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Style great, not much substance in this one. First much better

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

big city novels should feel broadly overwhelming and like you're 80% sure of what's happening.

[Dead John Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Behindlings

The second book in the Thames Gateway trilogy. Set on Canvey Island in Essex. If Essex is the butt of many jokes and looked down on by all of England, then Canvey holds that position for the rest of Essex.

It is an island that hovers at the "just above sea level" mark. There is now a massive Flood Wall that rings the island, adding to that separate-ness which is at the heart of everything in Canvey and Essex in general.

Basically it's a dump, it's at the top of all the bad lists and at the bottom of all the good lists. It's UKIP Heartland (racism, xenophobia, and more)

If they had a motto it would be "Fuck You" and underneath that someone would have graffitied: "and the horse you rode into town on".

There's a story from Roman history about their arrival in England. They sailed up the River Thames and when they saw a settlement they pulled and introduced themselves along the lines of:
"We are the famous Romans, we bring wine, peace and stability to all you good people in return for abject slavery."

The two groups faced each other, then one of the locals looked at one of the Romans and said, "Who are you looking at cunt? I'll come and smash your fucking face in, cunt".

The Roman leader then tried to mediate and was told to "Shut the fuck up and piss off you cunt".

The Romans, having never experienced anything quite like that, got back in their boats and continued up the Thames to London where their introduction was greeted by thunderous applause. Roman history records the people of Essex as disagreeable and unfriendly.

Here's a Poem by John Davison called Cantankerous Canvey.

In Canvey Island we like hard rock
And we all know our genders,
We hate them Mods from Basildon,
And we’re not keen on Southenders.
We don’t do ambiguity,
We seek out parties every night,
If you’re a chav from Chelmsford town, we’d beat you in a fight.

The fancy folk of Wivenhoe
They hardly know their neighbours,
But Canvey’s far more communal -
We do each uvva favours.
They know their sea defences
And the rhythm of the tides.
They’re handy at the carnival, they’re operating rides.

We don’t support designer drugs
We’ll confiscate syringes
Wear high heels on our dance floors -
A minimum free inches.
Crêches and casinos
Will stay open through the night.
And you can say goodbye to road tax if your van is painted white.

If you ride a bike on pavements
Or cause a small collision,
We’ll sentence you to fourteen nights
Of pub door supervision.
We hope to sign a trade deal
With the tiny Isle of Arran,
So if you’re fond of shepherd’s pie, please contact Wayne or Sharon.

Give us twenty years or so
And Canvey will be heaven,
We won’t miss high speed railways
Or the flippin’ Em eleven.
In our new republic
We’ll have no time for schemers,
They’ll be a tax on foreign motors, excepting “Mercs” and “Beamers”.

All that is to give you some idea of where the story is set, Canvey is so ripe , or umarriedly pregnant with potential storylines.

And so to the book. I did and didn't like it. It was set on Canvey but it does nothing for Canvey. Unlike Lord Of The Rings, no-one will be running Behindlings Tours.

It's well written and has its moments but I felt it could have been better. It was a bit of a pastiche not only on Canvey but also on the characters, they came across a bit light when some of them had good stories or good parts in the main story but they were just not developed.

Also, I think some of it was gratuitous only because of where it was set. No-one in Oxford vomits nonchalantly in their bedroom.

The story could have been set anywhere and it would have worked, as a story it stands in its own right but I feel setting it in Canvey has cheapened it and everyone in it.

I guarantee no-one in Canvey will ever read it.

A disappointment after the first book but I still have one to go.

[Le Dunc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This feels like the dry run for Darkmans; similarly complex approach to world-building through characters rather than telling a story with a clear, linear plot. The problem was that many of the characters were a bit one-dimensional. And the plot, once you figure it out, is a bit disappointing. Wesley holds the whole thing together. He is terrible in so many ways but fascinating. It's somehow believable that people follow him around.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wesley has eaten mostly seabirds in the past two months, Walks the perimeter of Canvey Island every morning (seventeen miles to be exact), and is fond of middle-aged librarians. For those who Follow, it's become confounding, because he usually moves on after a couple of days.

Prepare to be equally confounded with "Behindlings," a literary blender slopping out half-spoken bits of dialogue and little bits of scavenger hunt detritus. Nicola Barker has essentially written a sharp-tongued mystery. As a matter of fact, there are as many mysteries here as there are characters, or even relationships between them.

"Behindlings" is charmingly half-baked, with great pleasure coming from Wesley's incoherent but authoritative musings (both verbal and physical) about time and existence, and a host of breathless personages trying to keep pace for varying reasons -- the reassuring ritual and structure of self-appointed priesthood in a cult, the sense of belonging, the challenge of solving a mystery wrapped up in candy-wrapped clues. The author has built a society with its own history and mores from nothing more than a collection of vagabonds and a dirty bastard with a strangely magnetic personality.

However, I find that the author often has problems setting the scene, leaving the characters wandering in a white fog. Together with the massive ambition of the tale -- imagine the Canterbury Tales overheard across a crowded bar, punches flying and interlocutors wandering in and out to piss or taking each other aside to share secrets and form alliances -- it is not hard to lose one's bearings in "Behindlings," but Nicola Barker's voice is shockingly unique enough that I will gladly take another plunge in her work.

[Paolo Aceves · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book was too British for me, although I endured throughout the beginning with an endless sea of metaphors, seriously if the metaphors would be reduced to a minimum the book wouldn't be as long and wouldn't be so exhausting to finish. And the overuse of adjectives, felt like Nicola Barker was writing the novel with a thesaurus next to her. But the payoff was good, the reveals at the end on how the novel comes all together is rewarding and it gives a sense of human nature with all its faults which adds to the characters and rounds them off. It also helps to read the book thinking of Emma Thompson as the narrator, made the book more enjoyable for me.

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicola Barker is not for everyone. She's got a steam-of-consciousness technique that takes some effort, but it's mostly worth it. I didn't enjoy Behindlings as much as Darkmans, however; none of the characters really had a chance to make an impression. I couldn't really understand why Wesley was so compelling, for instance. If a guy is going to inspire a literal following, I would like to see some evidence for it.

It was worth the read, but probably not a good entry point for her work.

[Cliff · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have given up on this. I have become totally weary of the author's overuse of metaphor on page after page. She piles one on top of another. I've reached pages 164/165 and find three paragraphs using double or triple or quadruple metaphors on those two pages alone. Ok Ms Barker, you have a wonderful command of English but do you really need to show off quite as much? I thought this went out with Gerald Manley Hopkins

[VeganMedusa]

Maybe this would make more sense if I'd read the first one? Although a review said they're only based in the same world so it doesn't matter. I just wasn't in the mood to stick with it more than 120 pages. But I like the author's style so I may try other books by her.

[shiv · Rating 2 out of 5]

twee in a way i didn't particularly enjoy; always the threat of something sinister on the horizon, never delivered. though i did enjoy the reindeer quite a bit.