Verily miffed by the chancres of chance, chronically ineffective politician Derek Haffman affects to effect an unspecified political revolution by pickpocketing his colleagues in the lobby of the Scottish Parliament. In the wake of the abject failure of this objectless mission, repercussions naturally unfold in painfully precise procession, forcing Derek and his chronically untalented mistress, the singer in an avant-garde rock band too toxic for human ears, to flee to Cádiz. An unexpected visit from disgraced former politician and bestselling author Jethro Quiver unpeels another layer from the onion of shame in this shambling comic novel that chronicles the descent of a passionately aimless man, a rebel unable to think up an appropriate cause to lend his rebelling talents.
A pleasantly unpleasant tale told in four blissfully interminable chapters by the Milky Way’s leading virtuoso of the vowels and consonants, The Fall and Fall of Derek Haffman is the perfect read for anyone open to consider that unspecified solutions to unidentified political problems may not yield juicily delectable results.
Notices
The Fall and Fall of Derek Haffman is an angry, comedic political satire, which starts out at the Scottish Parliament and extends to encompass Britain’s political system, the venality of those who run it and the complacency of those who let them, its imperial past, its class system, the lies it tells about its history and, for good measure, The Cotswolds.
“At once whimsical and savage, Nicholls packs every paragraph with jokes, eccentric turns of phrase, scabrous slanders and bawdy imagery…. there is no shortage of mischievously funny lines to be found. Its energy seems inexhaustible, and Nicholls’ honest outrage … has cathartic weight.”
—Alastair Mabbott, in The Herald
