The son of a British undertaker tells of his painful relationship with his father, in a coming-of-age story about lying, cheating, stealing, sexual hysteria, and the truth in provincial northern England during the sixties.
From Publishers Weekly
This skillfully told, darkly comic novel progresses from a colorful picaresque--densely woven with brilliantly macabre, hilarious details--to a poignant story of a father/son reconciliation. Jack Hamer, a mustachioed Valentino employed as an undertaker in the North England city of Bradford, embezzles a sizable booty in empty coffins, fakes his own death and returns home 16 years later to the astonishment of his grown son. Like his father, Headingley Hamer has a well-developed talent for lying--one suited to his occupations as journalist, seducer and narrator of the story. Reunited, father and son engage in scandalous exploits in an effort to "see the elephant"--a phrase coined by soldiers in the American Civil War to describe "the excitement, the strangeness, and even the charm of battle."286 Those who must be conquered are women, especially each other's, and the two men engage in a heady Oedipal struggle to out-seduce each other. By the tale's end, however, Headingley has transcended the myth he has felt "doomed" to live out--repeating his father's mistakes. Rayner ( Los Angeles Without a Map ) manages to transform this self-conscious, protean narrator into an ordinary man who tells a moving truth.
Available on Amazon.