The Works Book

The critical fanfare that has greeted Joseph Connolly's books has been sustained and enthusiastic. His brilliant comic flair, exuberant plotting and fluent characterisation has marked out his work as something very unusual in these days of by-the-numbers novels. And The Works is as funny and enjoyable a book as any he has produced. The "works" of the title is an abandoned printing house by the Thames. It is the legacy that falls to Lucas Cage after the death of his father (an event that makes Lucas more than happy--he is not a man for false sentiment). As Lucas begins to reinvigorate the printing house, he gathers around him some special and unusual talents--mostly eccentric--whom he christens "the family". This group is as widely disparate (and wildly entertaining for the reader) as one could imagine. The most significant recruit is Jamie Dear, who abandons a dead marriage and a dead-end career to work with Lucas. Needless to say, all does not go smoothly, and the intermingling of personalities soon has surprising (and sometimes disastrous) results. As the above might suggest, there is more than a hint of the self-destructive communities in Iris Murdoch's novels here, but the spirit of PG Wodehouse is also hovering around the edges (Connolly wrote a much acclaimed biography of that writer). But, influences aside, The Works is a very individual piece: much more Joseph Connolly than homage to earlier writers. This is a mordant black farce of the first order. --Barry ForshawRead More