Cleaver

Description

Profound and comic, the story of London TV journalist and interviewer Harold Cleaver, who suddenly walks away from his life to hide in the mountains of the Tyrol. Overweight and overwrought, Howard Cleaver, London's most successful journalist, abruptly abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. It is the autumn of 2004 and Cleaver has recently enjoyed the celebrity attending his memorable interview with the President of the United States and suffered uncomfortable scrutiny following the publication of his elder son's novelised autobiography. He flies to Milan and heads deep into the South Tyrol, fetching up in the village of Luttach. His quest- to find a remote mountain hut, to get beyond the reach of email, and the mobile phone, and the interminable clamour of the public voice. Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the Tyrolese peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.

Born in Manchester, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. He is the author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, Cleaver, A Season with Verona and Teach Us to Sit Still. He has won the Somerset Maugham, Betty Trask and Llewellyn Rhys awards, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lectures on literary translation in Milan, writes for publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and his many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Tabucchi and Machiavelli.

Scintillating and subtly nuanced narrative. The secret of its success? Masterful prose, just free-form enough to imitate the whirligig of thought. Parks deserves to take a bow -- Alastair Sooke * New Statesman * Tim Parks is one of Britain's most underrated authors...His latest book, Cleaver, is a dense, intriguing novel, prickly and strange...The novel's portrait of a disintegrating mind is skilful, a fine anatomy of a psyche that flickers between ordinary neuroses and megalomania, and it offers a pungent critique of the middle-class media and their obsessions. Alongside this ruthless acuity, there is as well a certain human warmth -- Henry Hitchings * Financial Times * One can only admire the intelligence and skill with which Parks interleaves the disparate worlds of Chelsea and Sudtirol...I have now read Cleaver three times, and each has let me with greater respect for Park's abilities -- James Hamilton-Paterson * Guardian * Yet again, Parks has anatomised the complexities of the heart with a skill which few of his contemporaries can match -- David Robson * Daily Telegraph * Parks writes tragedy well and reveals Cleaver's piteous state, raw from loss and unable to mourn.....[Cleaver] is difficult to like and easy to judge, but he draws you into his world and convinces you to stay -- Katie Gould * Scotland on Sunday *