Wilson’s new novel is set in 1970 at the London Zoo. The narrator of the story is Simon Carter, ex-Treasury, and now the Zoo’s Secretary; married to a rich and charming young American and with two children. He is a naturalist with a great love for badgers (who as we know, take a deal of watching if one is to see anything of them), and has therefore some informed interest in the Society he serves. His life, like so many others when viewed in these general terms, seems to be both pleasant and stimulating. In fact, or life - and this novel is a most faithfully brilliant exposition of that transient quantity - Carter is beset by the warp and woof of loyalty and conscience: on the one hand, he has the Director, Leacock, over sixty, and relaxing into euphoric generalities the practice of which - at their best - involve everybody else in unnecessarily hard work; on the other, there is Sir Robert Falcon, Curator of Mammals, and number two in the Society, who has a belligerently nostalgic passion for maintaining and substantiating the old Zoo architecture and ways.
What do You think about An Awful Lot Of Books (2013)?
