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Post by dem on Oct 12, 2008 11:08:53 GMT
Gordon M. Williams - The Siege Of Trencher's Farm (Mayflower, 1971) Blurb: George Magruder (ultra-hygienic, over cautious American academic) comes with his English wife (beautiful, discontented) and daughter to a lonely farmhouse on the edge of Dartmoor.
It's a white Christmas - but the day begins to acquire a sense of danger when a pet cat is found strangled in a snow drift .... up on the moor a road accident sets free a notorious child killer .... a mentally defective girl disappears from the village party ... snow blocks country lanes ... telephone wires blown down in the storm that isolates the village.
Then to Trencher's Farm come five men ... with one murderous intent.
"Soon to be a major film starring Dustin Hoffman, Judy Geeson and David Warner" Watching the wonderful/ disturbing Straw Dogs again last night reminded me of just how much I enjoyed Gordon M. Williams' novel which I read in one sitting after Franklin kindly gave me a copy at the launch for Alwyn 'Trash Fiction' Turner's Pop Rock Posters (and what a night that was! Spizz talks to Vault people!). I never really 'reviewed' it - Franklin had already covered all bases in his original post which I hope he'll copy across! - but here's some random notes from Vault Mk. I to get us going! At first I thought we had a strong contender for worst pub landlord, but Harry Ware is too decent a bloke even if he does run an astonishingly hostile pub. Him being an outsider, the regulars of The Dando Inn, "thick necked, round-faced West Countrymen", treat him to his fair share of abuse, but he's a Geordie after all, not some Londoner or worse, some rich "flash yank", and he gets off reasonably light. It's these regulars - Tom Heddon, Norman Scutt, Phillip Riddaway, Chris Cawsey and Bert Voizey - who get it into their heads to attack the Magrugers, ostensibly because they're sheltering the child killer but their reasons run deeper. As Norman Scutt advances on George with his rifle he spits out the half of it : "We'll burn the house and the lot of you in her, you lot and that Niles friend of yours. You prefer him to the likes of we, don't you? Us be just yokels to you like, that's it, innit?" But there's far more to their loathing than that and Williams does a fine job of giving each man their own personal motivation for their part in the siege. Also, the book gets by just fine without the ever-controversial, was-it-or-wasn't-it-gratuitous rape Peckinpah entered into the mix. Best thing I've read in months.
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Post by sadako on Nov 10, 2008 12:17:23 GMT
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Post by dem on Jul 3, 2011 20:41:50 GMT
Gordon Williams - Straw Dogs (Bloomsbury, 2003) Blurb: 'A powerfully moving story, credible in every detail with sharply observed characters, expertly counterpointed.'de
New York Times Review of Books
The original novel from which Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film STRAW DOGS was adapted, first published as THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER'S FARM.
American academic George Magruder and his English wife Louise have left the busy city streets behind in search of tranquillity. They've rented an isolated stone house and intend to spend an icy winter in the remote Cornish village of Dando. But the locals greet their arrival with suspicion — and hostility.
The first shock comes when their daughter Karen stumbles across an object in the snow. Uncovering a piece of tabby fur, and then a leg, she finds the strangled body of their pet cat. Something is very wrong. And when a convicted child murderer escapes across the moor and a local girl goes missing, it is the Magruders who become the mistaken targets of the village's primitive and brutal vengeance.
`This book makes you want to drown in your own puke' Sam Peckinpah, Playboy
`Nasty, if gripping ... celebrates the transformation of a pacific professor into a "real man", Observera recent edition, not quite a match for the definitive edition above, and posted in the hope that Franklin gets to see it and copies across his article on book & film from Vault MK I.
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Post by stuyoung on Jul 13, 2011 9:02:33 GMT
I've got the Mayflower tie-in edition but haven't got round to reading it yet. Hopefully I'll remedy that soon. I'm also tempted to try the stuff Williams wrote as PB Yuill -- the Hazell books and The Bornless Keeper.
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