Article: In `Cleaver,' a cad in exile confronts the demons from his past

Book Review

CLEAVER

BY TIM PARKS

ARCADE, 316 pp., $25

Where do the humiliated hide out in the 21st century? It's not just a question for ex-governors and gadflies, since public personas flee the same thing that hounds us all in a more minor fashion - the constant swirl of the media and its amnesiac appetite for scandal and vengeance. Is it possible for us to unplug from this electronic drip feed (not to mention our BlackBerries), and if we do, what happens to our minds?

This is one of the more pressing questions hanging over Tim Parks's agitated, engaging new novel, "Cleaver." As the tale begins, its BBC television presenter hero Harold Cleaver has simultaneously experienced the apex and ...

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