MR CADMUS
PETER ACKROYD Canongate, 192pp, £12
Peter Ackroyd’s most recent novel, beautifully produced in a small format, conceals a twisted, gothic tale of eccentric cousins, a distrustful vicar, an overbearing GP, and a few surviving soldiers who had served together in the same regiment in Italy in the second world war. It is set in the fictional village of Little Camborne, a bucolic portrait of an English village, into which enter a foreigner, Mr Cadmus, and his show-stealing parrot. Like a cat among pigeons the exotic new arrival sets off a series of events which bring the main characters ineluctably to their fate.
‘But what starts as a witty, satirical tale littered with dry humour and well-placed clues turns from the absurd to the obscure by the end,’ said Aisling Mcguire in Scotland’s Wee
Review. ‘It is like reading two entirely different stories – one well-written and enticingly clever … and one written at random and with little time to take the story to a logical conclusion.’ Its ‘illogical, bewildering
ending’ proved problematic for most critics.
Houman Barekat commented on the story’s denouement. Writing in the Times, he called this novel a ‘playful black comedy’ and its ‘affectionate send-up of parochial English primness makes for agreeable light reading’, but the ‘outlandish turn’ towards the ending, displayed a ‘somewhat abrupt key change — from comic noir to gaudy mysticism’, spoiling an otherwise ‘well-crafted tale’. Nicholas Clee, writing in the TLS agreed. He called this piece a ‘dark jeu d’esprit’, but which he suspected was the ‘product of hasty construction’.
Andrew Hill in the FT was conflicted too. ‘ Mr Cadmus starts, promisingly’ and Ackroyd’s ‘depiction of the small-minded bitchiness of the villagers occasionally hits the mark’, but ‘fiction at this length — more novella than novel — calls for spring-tight plotting. Instead, Mr
Cadmus gradually comes completely unwound.’