Nature and Necessity - Softcover

Goddard, Tariq

Softcover

ISBN 10: 191092444X ISBN 13: 9781910924440

Publisher: Repeater, 2017

Synopsis

'...there's a ferocious energy here that will keep you reading through to the bitter end. Goddard has reinvigorated the country house novel and in Petula Montague he has created a great new monster of English fiction.' The Guardian

Meet Petula Montague, social climber par excellence. A lucky second marriage to a billionaire has made her grande dame of The Heights, a mansion atop a leafy hill in an English backwater. With the determination of a prima ballerina, Petula sets out to widen her social circle so that it includes lords of industry, famous actors from London, and the country’s most famous poet. In her wake are the frayed lives of three unloved children. The oldest daughter, Evita, flees the scene only to succumb to addiction and madness; the middle son, Jasper, moves from the Heights to a cottage on the property, living like a dog awaiting scraps from its master; and the youngest daughter, Regan, the favorite, merges with her mother and pays the costs of an unlived life.  

At once deeply satirical and moodily realistic, Nature and Necessity is a profound meditation on the irresistible lure of wealth and security. Told with a pre-modern sensibility, the narrative treats its characters like the players in a Victorian domestic epic. Goddard deftly draws scenes that are psychologically acute, even heartbreaking, yet never fail to raise a smile or a knowing shake of the head. As the plot reaches its crescendo, Goddard lets us laugh at the folly of Petula while never letting us forget that her story is our own.

About this title

About the Author

Tariq Goddard was born in London and read philosophy at King's College, London, and Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick. In 2002 his first novel, Homage to a Firing Squad, was shortlisted for the Whitbread (Costa) Book Award for First Novel and the Wodehouse-Bollinger Writing Award. He was included as one of Waterstones' 'Faces of the Future' and the novel, whose film rights were sold, was listed as one of The Observer Four Debuts of the Year. In 2003, his second novel, Dynamo, was cited as one of the ten best sports novels of all time by The Observer Sports Magazine. The Morning Rides Behind Us, his third novel, was released in 2005, and short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Fiction. In 2010, The Picture of Contented New Wealth, his fourth novel, won The Independent Publishers Award for Horror Writing, and he was awarded a development grant by The Royal Literary Fund. The Message, published in 2011 and set in a fictional African state, received Silver at the 2012 Independent Publishers Award for Literary Fiction.

In 2007, Goddard began the imprint Zero Books. In 2014, he and his co-founders left Zero Books and started Repeater Books. He lives on a farm in Wiltshire with his wife and children where he is writing his seventh novel, High John The Conqueror.

Review

“Goddard describes a very English savagery with wit, subtle insight, and compelling accuracy. Dostoevskian inscape, psychoanalytical in depth, Nature and Necessity is grimly addictive.”

—3 AM Magazine

In Tariq Goddard’s comedy of manners, Nature and Necessity, Petula Montague rules her adult children asonly a narcissistic doyenne could. This thorough, perceptive portrayal of a socialite whose calculating nature masks areluctance to confront herself is a wild study in character. Goddard features life in the English countryside withblistering effects.

—Foreword Reviews

"...there's a ferocious energy here that will keep you reading through to the bitter end. Goddard has reinvigorated the country house novel and in Petula Montague he has created a great new monster of English fiction."

—The Guardian

“His best and most ambitious work to date whose guts sprawl over every page - this is a delicious read”

—The Quietus.

“A hugely ambitious novel that recounts the inescapable dark sewers of the soul inhabited by the English Upper Middle Class.”

—Darren Ambrose, author of Film, Nihilism and The Restoration of Belief

This is a wonderfully in-depth journey into the lives of a remarkable family led by Petula, the ultimate, ruthless matriarch.
 
It is not just a journey in time, with family events leading to a compelling, affectionate and dramatic denouement, but a journey in prose, too.  Because every sentence is a delight to read, crafted with an intricate yet intuitive design that makes the words themselves every bit as compelling as the plot.
 
For this excellent reason, every sentence deserves to be savored and many lingered over for their originality, inner meaning and insights into this wonderfully dysfunctional family.
 
Its portrayal of country life has an enviable authenticity which means it is surely cut from real life.  But it is sculpted to have a special significance and theme that raises it above ordinary reality.
 
It is the story of a family, dark, deep, funny and, above all, likeable. I’m missing Petula and her children already. 
 
—Pat Mills, creator of 2000 AD

A vast, immersive family saga, this book insists on the mud in blood, the wood in flesh - the astounding inextricability of the human animal from the earth in which it was formed. Goddard shows us that blood-relations are exactly that - bloody. This is nature writing at its most intensely observed, and ever mindful of our position within the colossal movements of the world. The 'necessity' of the title is inarguable. 

—Niall Griffiths, author of Stump: A Novel

Tariq Goddard is good on houses and the people who inhabit them and the interplay between the inanimate and the humans who ascribe the inanimate with qualities that vary from the banal to the outré.

In this instance the humans are snobbish, social climbing Yorkshire bohemians, gruesome people whose mores, pretences and hierarchical delusions are pungently portrayed. Their children are unspeakable. Their aquaintances include a marvellous caricature of Ted Hughes and some deftly drawn theatre folk. The book is a stern warning not to venture north of the Humber – though it is of course possible that such monsters of self-preoccupation may be found in, say, Cranborne Chase.

—Jonathan Meades, author An Encyclopedia of Myself
“Quick reading yet richly detailed, Dostoyevskian in form, theme and scope, with a knack for narrative momentum and piquing itchy curiousity for the next page. Nature and Necessity is a proper novel.”

—Tristam Vivien Adams, the author of The Psychopath Factory

"An alluringly civilised prose style, which raises questions about what is normally considered civilised and why, unfolding like a horrific modern day Middlemarch...but beneath the surface ugliness lies a deep, quiet beauty, like a quality whiskey that makes your eyes water at first, Goddard’s novel has a rich afterglow.:  

—LIT ALL OVER

Edition details

• Publisher: Repeater
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 191092444X
• ISBN 13: 9781910924440
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 594