What A Carve Up by Jonathan Coe (audio book)

Pinching an idea from Miss Robinson, I recently bought the audio book of What A Carve Up to fill the morning and evening drive-times in the car. I read the book years ago when it originally came out and have read it again a couple of times since. It is one of my absolute favourite novels.

I was first drawn to it because it shares its title with an obscure British comedy of the early 1960s with which I am obsessed. (As well as a copy of the film on DVD, I've got a set of lobby cards and an extremely rare Belgian cinema poster). The events in the book intersect with the original movie in all kinds of unusual ways - there is a particularly hilarious imagined moment involving one of the book's characters and the very real Sid James. The book blends fact and fiction effortlessly.

A satirical swipe at that cruel decade the 1980s, What A Carve Up is a funny, sad, cynical and ultimately sympathetic novel. Its narrator is a writer, Michael, who is hired to write a family history of the ghastly Winshaw dynasty. But the more he finds out about them, the less worthy they appear. Newspaper columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't; Henry's turning hospitals into carparks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm, Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; Thomas is making a killing on the stock-exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators.

This cruel and loathsome family do eventually get their come-uppance, but it comes at a high and improbable price. I'm hoping the BBC will repeat their excellent radio adaptation of a few years back, but until then I'll be interested to see how the audio version compares.

Mr Mudd