Hodd, Adam Thorpe
Jonathan Cape, 336pp, £17.99
OK, deep breath: this novel takes the form of a first-time publication of an English academic’s 1920s translation of a Latin manuscript written by an unnamed harp-playing monk in 1305. It is also about Robin Hood, then known as Robert Hodd. This monk was, for a time, one of Hodd’s not-so-merry men, and his account shows that Hodd was not much like Errol Flynn. Rather, he cuts a Kurtz-like figure, holding court in the forest’s medieval gloaming, a scarred, brutal, senseless and deluded terrorist and torturer who “looks most horribly like a god”.

Thorpe’s questions about the power of words and the fine line between history and myth are valid ones and, stylistically, he is spot-on. This means, however, that Hodd reads like a medieval manuscript: in a trick that quickly wears thin, the unreliable author variously spells Hodd as Hod, Hode, Hodde or Hoode. Moreover, the many footnotes are too integral to the thesis to be skipped, making this novel, for all its conceptual ambition, a disjointed read.
Martin Hemming

Pygmy, Chuck Palahniuk
Jonathan Cape, 256pp, £12.99
Described as Palahniuk’s “most ambitious novel” since Fight Club came out, Pygmy confirms that Palahniuk has never quite recovered from the pop-culture bombshell the earlier book became when it was published in 1996. The shadow of those glorious days is clearly a perpetual torment. Pygmy is a sequence of despatches by Agent 67 (known as Pygmy because of his size), an enemy spy posing as a 13-year-old exchange student,
on a mission to bring America to its knees.

But the tale of Pygmy is an extended, indulgent exercise in “foreigner-people-no-speak-English-very-good” prose. Whereas novels such as Trainspotting or A Clockwork Orange create their own language-worlds in order to absorb readers in surreally affecting new environments, Palahniuk’s efforts amount to little more than a series of hollow stereotypes that mock and parody their targets. There are a few smirks to be had here and there, but the effort required to conquer Pygmy’s cloying observations on American life yields few rewards. This isn’t the side-splittingly hilarious take on world affairs it was obviously intended to be.
Tom Lewis