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Article: In `Cleaver,' a cad in exile confronts the demons from his past
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- March 26, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2008 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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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 ...