Upon closing “The Late Hector Kipling” I thought its plot defied summary. Then I remembered that Hector Kipling ably provides one himself:
“Dad’s in hospital, Kirk’s in hospital, Sofia’s in hospital, I’m having an affair with a sadomasochistic Brooklyn poet, and some stranger who threw horse s – – – all over my painting of his dead father has robbed my parents and sent me the corpse of their dog hidden in the base of a hideous settee. I don’t know, is it me, am I exaggerating, or has my life just turned into some sort of drunken collaboration between Feydeau and Dante?”
To get one thing out of the way quickly: the author of these lines is David Thewlis the actor, last seen as Professor Lupin in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” but more memorable for his turn as the giggle-afflicted “video artist” Knox Harrington in “The Big Lebowski.”
Kipling is a fairly successful 40-something painter who suffers a tearful breakdown in front of an unnamed Munch portrait at the Tate Modern. This is an event that augurs many sexual and emotional tortures to come, some of which are inspired, others plodding and tedious. Thewlis has written a kind of postmodern Book of Job that, at its best, combines the working-class patois of Nick Hornby with the sophisticated satire of David Lodge. His ending, which implausible even for a novel that makes great sport of surrealism, could have used work, and yet I still think here’s a budding talent – the first gifted character actor to try his hand at fiction and actually impress.
The Late Hector Kipling: A Novel
by David Thewlis
Simon & Schuster