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The Review - BOOKS
Published: 10 January 2008

How Fee dumped Tod by txt

ANDY Croft’s handicraft is stretched to the limit in this ambitious project – to produce a novel based on Hamlet, entirely in verse and Pushkin sonnets.
But he rises to the challenge magnificently.
Once the less poetic reader has overcome the daunting prospect of starting such a long poem, he or she will find it gripping enough to read in one sitting.
The Hamlet plot is full of intrigue and brought bang up to date, with plenty of powerful political points, and bags of humour.
It is about a modern-day author, Tod Prince, writing a biography about a 1930s poet who fought for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
He comes under various competing pressures to modify it from his publisher (who has a personal axe to grind), the ghost of the subject himself, and the ghosts of his wife and comrade.
The novel has much to say about the nature of the modern-day media and publishing business, and what the Spanish Civil War was all about – from a communist perspective.
The self-imposed restraint of the format leads to some strange rhymes and line breaks, but this amuses rather than distracts.
One example is:
This morning’s Guardian says the odds-
On favourite book this year is Tod’s.
Woven into the plot is Tod’s volatile sexual relationship with Fee. This includes a hilarious passage where he is vexed to be dumped by text:
lst nite ws so humili8ing
nxt tme u fncy celebr8ing
fnd som1 else to hold yr h&
i 1der if u undrst&
ths tme it is gdby 4eva
wr brking up, ur batrys fl@
& u r actng lk a pr@
as sum1 said: the ?s weva
u wnt 2b or nt 2b
a tossa all ur lfe. x Fee.

MIKE PENTELOW

• Ghost Writer.
By Andy Croft. Five Leaves Publications £7.99.

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