The Secret Purposes

  • ISBN: 0316859311
  • Author: David Baddiel
  • Description:
    What might you expect in a novel such as The Secret Purposes from the talented David Baddiel? Apart from the laddishness of his Fantasy Football TV appearances with Frank Skinner, Baddiel has proved himself to be one of the sharpest and most perceptive of younger novelists, with a sympathetic understanding of human nature (perhaps we can blame Baddiel's TV persona on his co-compere, whose own literary efforts haven’t matched Baddiel's highly accomplished Time for Bed and Whatever Love Means). The earlier books were darkly comic pieces shot through with his trademark seriousness; the new book is a striking departure. The subject is a hidden part of British history, treated with gravity: the internment of German Jewish refugees on the Isle of Man in the 1940s. June Murray is a translator who doesn’t share the unsympathetic incomprehension of her colleagues at the Ministry of Information, and travels to the Isle of Man in order to interview the Jews interned there. June hopes to expose the true horror of what the Nazis are doing, but her best efforts are wasted, and she can glean nothing. But her relationship with a man she meets, the highly intelligent (if ineffectual) Isaac Fabian, is to have a profound influence on her life and thinking--and nothing will be the same again for June, Isaac or his wife and daughter. This is clearly a very personal subject for Baddiel, and he produced his most affecting and (in many ways) timely novel yet. Time and place are evoked with quite as much skill as the rich characterisation--June is a heroine to draw the reader ineluctably into the moving narrative.--Barry Forshaw Scotland on Sunday 'A great novel and a cracking read to boot'
  • Pages: 416
  • Format: Hardback
  • Genre: General
  • Rating: Not yet rated

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Some Other Books by this Author

  • Time For BedGabriel can't get to sleep. Or anywhere else, either in his Triumph Dolomite or his life. But he's not unduly worried; he's too busy being in love with his happily married brother's wife. He knows this won't achieve happ...
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  • Whatever Love MeansVic is a nearly-famous rock guitarist thinking about shacking up in south London with his foul-mouthed thirty-something girlfriend Tess; Vic's best friend Joe is a geeky, AIDS-researching biochemist who shares a son and ...
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