Tim Parks: Family Reading Matter

Posted on February 18, 2006 by Chris Mitchell

Amusing piece by Tim Parks in The Guardian about the trouble with your wife and children reading the novels you wrote.

It was of this book that some reviewer remarked that "Parks's nearest and dearest must tremble whenever another novel comes out". But actually the person who gets a little nervous is me. "Why ever would I teach at the university if not to have a constant supply of fit young women to shag?" my son has just read in the first chapter of this novel. His father, of course, teaches at a university, where, notoriously, 90% of the students studying languages are young women.

"Mick," I suggest, "if I were you I would have checked out one of the other books first. The one about canoeing maybe. The one about the Medici bank. About football."

"Oh no, this is OK," he says. "Pretty funny in parts. But the sentences are way too long, Dad. You should have shortened them."

Steve reviewed Tim Parks' Destiny back in 2000 and Chris Rose reviewed A Season With Verona a couple of years later.

Tim Parks gave Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet a deservedly good kicking on Spike back in 2000 too.