Cleaver

by TimParks (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.25

  Overweight and overwrought, Howard Cleaver, London's most successful journalist, abruptly abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. It is the autumn of 2004 and Cleaver has recently enjoyed the celebrity attending his memorable interview with the President of the United States and suffered uncomfortable scrutiny following the publication of his elder son's novelised autobiography. He flies to Milan and heads deep into the South Tyrol, fetching up in the village of Luttach. His quest: to find a remote mountain hut, to get beyond the reach of email, and the mobile phone, and the interminable clamour of the public voice. Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the Tyrolese peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.25

  In the autumn of 2004, shortly after his memorable interview with the President of the United States and following the publication of his elder son's novelised autobiography, cruelly entitled Under His Shadow , celebrity journalist, broadcaster and documentary film-maker Harold Cleaver boarded a British Airways flight from London Gatwick to Milan Malpensa, proceeded by Italian railways as far as Bruneck in the South Tyrol and thence by taxi, northwards, to the village of Luttach only a few kilometres from the Austrian border, from whence he hoped to find some remote mountain habitation in which to spend the next, if not necessarily the last, years of his life. Thus opens Tim Parks' new novel and masterpiece. Overweight and overwrought, London's most successful journalist abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. His quest: to climb above the noise line, to get beyond the e.mail and the mobile phone and the interminable clamour of the public voice of which he himself was such a master. Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the gothic peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.