The Underground Man - Softcover

Jackson, Mick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571236294 ISBN 13: 9780571236299

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2007

Synopsis

One of the most acclaimed novels of recent times, The Underground Man is the fictionalised diary of a deeply eccentric English aristocrat.

The duke has just completed a network of tunnels beneath his estate. His health is failing, but his imagination seems to know no bounds. And while he spends more time underground and retreats ever deeper into the darker corners of his house there are some ghosts that demand to be acknowledged and some memories which insist on making themselves known.

About this title

Review:

Mick Jackson makes films. It's no surprise, then, that his first novel, The Underground Man, should be so economically told, the action evoking a mise en scène. The novel takes the form of journal entries interspersed with eyewitness accounts from servants and neighbours. The "Underground Man" portrayed in the novel, William John Cavendish Bentinck-Scott, the Duke of Portland and a resident of Nottinghamshire, is mightily eccentric; the man was real (1800-1879), as was his eccentricity. Historical fact: the Duke commissioned eight tunnels on his estate. Present-day fact: if you walk the estate today, you see the skylights--2ft in diameter and 4in thick. But why did he build them?

In the last few days of the Duke's life, eccentricity burgeons and madness follows. The reader learns that his odd view of the world was shaped by early tragedy, the full truth of which is withheld until the last few pages.

The Underground Man is that most delectable blend of fact and fiction, one in which the intriguing details of a real life are richly explored through imagination.

Review:

"'Quite simply, astonishing.' Observer"

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0571236294
• ISBN 13: 9780571236299
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272