Sometimes you stumble across a book that you just want to tell
everyone about. It happened with the first Harry Potter (although I
mostly told people that it was ripping everyone else off
It
happened with Jasper Fforde (and hooray, The Well of Lost Plots is
finally out) and now it's happened again.
The Tournament, by John Clarke.
If you enjoyed the literary conceit of Thursday Next, then this will
be right up your street. The Tournament is simply an account of a
tennis tournament held in Paris with match reports and off-court
anecdotes. The twist is that the competitors are literary, film,
music and similar celebrities, with not a "proper" sportsperson in
sight. Thus the event opens with an exhibition doubles match between
Claude Monet & Henrik Ibsen and Mark Twain & Henry James, and includes
such delights as a match between Salvador Dali and WC Fields which
almost doesn't take place at all, Charles Chaplin being hampered by
his trousers falling down a lot, Isadora Duncan playing in a long
flowing dress which looked as though it was going to cause an accident
at any moment, Agatha Christie going mysteriously missing mid-event
and William Burroughs being sent home after a routine drugs test found
every banned substance on the list. Amongst other things.
It's hard to sustain an idea like this for more than a couple of pages
unless you've got something to hang it on (cf Thursday Next) but
Clarke manages to cope because of the sheer size of his cast. There's
no plot to speak of, it's really just a sequence of parodies of
literary styles and journalistic cliches but it's fun from beginning
to (surprisingly exciting) end.
--
David Brain
(wonders: do Umbrella Shops ever hold sales?)
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