This week, while daily commuting to London and back, I’ve been getting some reading done. Shakespeare, Sewall’s biography of Dickinson, and - at last - some non-required reading. Ned Beauman’s addition to this year’s Man-Booker Longlist for The Teleportation Accident reminded me of my long intention to read his first book, Boxer Beetle , written at the disgustingly unripe age of 24. I have had my suspicions that Beauman is – with this tremendous head-start – going to go very far indeed, perhaps as another Amis. But those Beauman shows the same precocity, his realization is rather different. Boxer Beetle is at heart a ripping piece of genre fiction – a mixture of mystery and smut. It has the enjoyable pace of a cheap yarn. This is not to degrade it: Beauman has attempted to marry a vividly fluid prose with a bright and curious mind which is evidently drawn to the tawdry. The novel is the story of a modern-day Nazi-memorabilia collector who is pulled into a mystery involving
Reading, writing, traveling