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The Yips

3.18 of 5 stars 3.18 · rating details · 196 ratings · 52 reviews

A new novel of the pre-Olympic moment from the Booker-shortlisted author of ‘Darkmans’, Nicola Barker.

'There was a rat in the bath', Gene explains. 'It's a long story, but basically I fished it out and was carrying around by the tail, not quite sure how to dispose of it, when I managed to barge in on this woman having a genital tattoo'.

2006 is a foreign country; they do th...more

Hardcover, 550 pages

Published July 19th 2012 by Fourth Estate (first published January 1st 2012)

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Man Booker Prize Eligible 2012

35th out of 152 books — 223 voters

2012 Man Booker Prize Longlist

10th out of 12 books — 115 voters

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Aug 21, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels, sassysassenachs, tortured-artists, distaff

The middle point between Darkmans and Burley Cross Postbox Theft. Attempts the weaving of a series of anarchic comic plots à la the latter with the palpable if underunderstated tone of pathos of the former. The Yips is a yelping comedy, stuffed with manic eccentrics, their manic eccentricities cranked to eleven in the form of larger-than-life dialogue tics—ludicrous overemphasis, autopilot whimsy, cartoony character traits, etc. The book’s linking solvent comes in this questionable notion of ‘em...more

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Jun 13, 2013 John Richardson added it

Terrible. Almost every reviewer gave this 2012 Booker long-listed novel four or five stars, so I was very hopeful. Sam Leith in The Guardian called it an "extravaganza", Keith Miller in The Telegraph said it was an "enjoyable novel about love and golf" and Michael Prodger in the FT told readers it was "snortingly funny". The Yips is indeed about golf; one of its central characters is Stuart Ransom, a has-been pro golfer suffering from the affliction alluded to in the book's title. He is appallin...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Davidg rated it 4 of 5 stars

An enjoyable fun read.

It has been interesting to compare my experience with other reviewers, both here an on Amazon, especially those who have rated the book poorly. Part way through, I realised that the book I was most reminded of was Gormenghast. Nicola Baker may seem to set her books in the real world, e.g. Luton, but it isn't our world. Her characters are not real people but often grotesques, with exaggerated qualities (and faults). You either decide to dive in and live in the world of her i...more An enjoyable fun read.

It has been interesting to compare my experience with other reviewers, both here an on Amazon, especially those who have rated the book poorly. Part way through, I realised that the book I was most reminded of was Gormenghast. Nicola Baker may seem to set her books in the real world, e.g. Luton, but it isn't our world. Her characters are not real people but often grotesques, with exaggerated qualities (and faults). You either decide to dive in and live in the world of her imagination or you don't. I suspect that trying to fit her world into your idea of the real Luton would never work. How could there ever be a meter reader who only ever seems to visit one house and then never needs to clock on and read more meters the next day? In an unreal world that isn't a problem.

I read Darkmans, her last but one novel, on holiday a few years ago and enjoyed it, but I remember it's strangeness and struggling slightly with it. I might have to get it off the shelf and see how it compares to The Yips.

Barker deliberately keeps important information from the reader and then drops it into a conversation pages later, so about 200 pages in, you suddenly discover why things happened, or were said, in the early pages. But, as I said, if you have decided to accept Baker's world, this isn't a problem. Gradually the different threads begin to pull together, and gradually the reader begins to know more than the characters, who continue to misunderstand and misinterpret each other.

I quite enjoyed the fact that there is no clean ending with all loose ends tied neatly - the rest of the book isn't neat, why should the ending be? However, there is a sense of conclusion with various moments of crisis passed, but whether any of the proposed futures given for any of the characters would actually transpire is left for the reader to guess.

There is much silliness and almost farce within the pages of The Yips, but what lifts it onto Booker longlists is the darkness it also contains. There is monstrous egotism, rage, fear, faith, doubt and, above all, struggling with life and death.

If I could, I would give it 4.5 stars.(less)

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Aug 30, 2012 Ben Dutton rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nicola Barker is no stranger to the Man Booker lists – she was shortlisted for Darkmans and longlisted for Clear – and yet she is one of those novelists that I’ve never gotten around to reading. I should have come to her sooner, for on the basis of The Yips, she is bloody brilliant.

It seems, to me, that Barker’s fiction is all about the characters – the plot is almost incidental – and in The Yips the cast of characters is broad and all well drawn. There’s Shelia, a vicar, who is married to Gene,...more Nicola Barker is no stranger to the Man Booker lists – she was shortlisted for Darkmans and longlisted for Clear – and yet she is one of those novelists that I’ve never gotten around to reading. I should have come to her sooner, for on the basis of The Yips, she is bloody brilliant.

It seems, to me, that Barker’s fiction is all about the characters – the plot is almost incidental – and in The Yips the cast of characters is broad and all well drawn. There’s Shelia, a vicar, who is married to Gene, who works three jobs and has survived cancer seven times. He works with Jen, who is a barmaid with a PhD in bullshit. Together they meet Stuart Ransom, a golfing legend whose life is in freefall. Then there’s a tattooist who specialises in genital tattooing, and a free-thinking Muslim sex therapist. Their lives collide, again and again, quite often in comic fashion. There is a plot behind all this manic energy, but it’s best not to summarise it, but to ride it, like a wave. It is the sheer momentum, the fizzle-crack of Barker’s dialogue, and the often hilarious asides that carry you through the 550 page doorstop of book. It really doesn’t feel that long.

Barker’s novel is certainly outside the realist tradition favoured by most novelists working in English today (myself included), and is closer to a ribald sex comedy of the Elizabethan age. There are secret identities, lost children, trickster figures, a punch-up on a giant chess-board. It has a manic, almost magical, energy. The formatting of her pages is odd as well, deliberately so – reading it I found I couldn’t quite recall how a page was supposed to look, that this was odd, but that it was also distinctly pleasing. It made the familiar strange again.

In this kind of novel it is easy to develop a favourite character as well, and for me it was a toss-up between Ransom and Jen – is Jen a genius or just a clever flirt? Is Ransom actually so full of bullshit or is there a real man hiding inside? Nicola Barker would never deign to give you answers, but she’ll thoroughly entertain you as you try and work it out.

The Yips has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012.

Will it win?

I have read, a while ago, that it is one of the favourites to take the prize this year. Having not read her other novels, I can’t say if this is her best, but it is certainly very good, very fresh, and very funny. The Booker has, in previous years, been given some criticism for not awarding to comic novels (until Howard Jacobson), and it’s sheer manic energy might see it booted off the longlist, but I doubt it. I’m almost certain it will be shortlisted. Will it win though? It might. I’ll hold off judgement until I’ve read the rest of the longlist.(less)

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Aug 25, 2012 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, feminisim

I did not like this book, although that does not mean it is not a good book or worth reading.....and I did catch myself laughing out loud several times, to the point where tears were running down my face. It is difficult for me to pinpoint, why I didn't like The Yips. I did not mind the sense of "huh" at the end, the foul language, the apparent randomness. In fact, I think one of the characters (Jen) summarises The Yips quite well: "Most of it is just ideas, just chatter. This big, stupid, inane...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Jakey Gee rated it 1 of 5 stars

J.D. Wetherspoon – the Novel.

Save yourself the trouble of reading this by watching a non-consecutive reel of ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’ (or some forgotten early nineties sitcom). Be sure to look away from the screen, to accurately evoke the need to understand everything though dialogue. Sit back and dream of it all ending.

This is quite the biggest pile of horseshit I have read in many years – and I’ve read ‘Darkmans’, the last Booker longlisted Nicola Barker. That it is widely...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Ian Young rated it 4 of 5 stars

I approached The Yips by Nicola Barker with a certain amount of caution. It is a large book (almost 550 pages) from an author with a reputation for experimental writing and from its title seemed to be set around the game of Golf, or to be more precise on a Golfer. When I finished it, I felt significantly more positive – it was an entertaining read which seemed shorter than its page length, always a good sign. It has now been long listed for this year’s Booker prize and seems to be one of the fav...more I approached The Yips by Nicola Barker with a certain amount of caution. It is a large book (almost 550 pages) from an author with a reputation for experimental writing and from its title seemed to be set around the game of Golf, or to be more precise on a Golfer. When I finished it, I felt significantly more positive – it was an entertaining read which seemed shorter than its page length, always a good sign. It has now been long listed for this year’s Booker prize and seems to be one of the favourites to progress onto the shortlist. Hopefully, this will help to draw it to the attention of a wider readership.

"The Yips" refers to the disabling twitch which some golfers develop when attempting short putts, usually a sign of anxiety or psychological stress. In order to deal with this they will frequently switch from a standard putter to a long “belly putter” in an effort to compensate. The central character of this novel, Stuart Ransom, has such an affliction, although it is one of the least of his many problems. He has a colourful (and unrealistic) back story, but has become a flamboyant and successful professional golfer, greatly loved by the tabloid press and forever embroiled in one scandal or another. As we meet him, his golfing career seems to be on downward trajectory to disaster. The development of The Yips is symptomatic of this, but in the context of the novel provides a metaphor for the many other flaws possessed by him and by almost all of the other characters with whom he interacts.

Among these are a man who has had cancer seven times, his wife (a priest given to outbursts of bizarre and erratic behaviour) and the family of a notorious local fascist. On a previous visit to the town, Ransom managed to hit the fascist’s wife on the head with a stray golf ball, leading to an ongoing public feud with her son. Meanwhile, her daughter has become an agoraphobic recluse, making a living as a hyperrealist tattooist of pubic hair for mainly far Eastern clients. Mixed in with these eccentrics is an ever-present barmaid with multiple personas, a freethinking Islamic sex therapist and his family and Ransom’s long-suffering entourage. It is a heady mix which works more successfully than you might expect from my descriptions.

Towards the end of the novel there is a section where two of the characters discuss what life is like. Mainly consisting of stuff they conclude. All sorts of stuff, piled up fairly randomly and sometimes threatening to fall over, at which point everyone starts to build it up again. To an extent, this sums up Barker’s writing style and in particular the plot development in this novel. But it works - it made me laugh in places and provoked a few ideas and thoughts worth pursuing. It represents an easier introduction to her work than her previous Booker prize listed novel (Darkmans). Recommended.
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Aug 06, 2012 Aaron (Typographical Era) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, nook, man-booker-2012, nicola-barker

Nicola Barker’s ninth novel The Yips takes its title from the slang word used to describe the medical term focal dystonia which basically boils down to a loss of the control over fine motor skills without any explainable reason. Most notably in sports such as golf (goll-oll-llolf!) it causes shaky hands which can lead to an inability to perform, forcing some players to readjust their game to compensate for the deficiency and others still to throw in the towel and call it a day. Stuart Ransom, he...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Sheli rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, contemporary, for-review, netgalley, man-booker-2012

I requested this book from NetGalley as it had been on my wishlist since it was longlisted for the Man Booker this year. I was pretty excited when it was approved and couldn't wait to get started!

The book itself is written in an interesting style and we get an insight into a number of very different characters lives and they all become entangled in a huge spiders web with each other. I really liked the style of the book and it felt a little bit like being a nosy neighbour and seeing a little bit...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Sophia rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Yips is apparently the term given to a nervous trembling that can strike a golfer as he's trying to line up an important shot, making this rather a nifty title for a humourous book that's set partly in a golf resort.

The novel has an ensemble cast that consists of Stuart Ransom, a supremely egotistical professional golfer, Gene, who works at the resort's hotel when he's not reading electricity meters, Sheila, Gene's vicar wife, Valentine, an agoraphobic tattooist who looks after her mentally...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Elaine rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I'd never read Barker before and I doubt I ever will again. This book was like spending several days in the company of one of those self-consciously "wacky", trying way too hard to be eccentric girls we all knew in college. All of Barker's characters are a jumble of extreme traits - agoraphobic gorgeous burlesque-dressing tattooist of pubic hair descended from Nazis (really), to give but one example - but none are real people, although all are tedious. The book is also written almost entirely in...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Suze65 Laddon rated it 2 of 5 stars

Have you ever read a novel that seems to simply... end? Abruptly, I might add, which left me more than a little nonplussed and underwhelmed. I will say that I was drawn in by these characters, alternately liking, or disliking them on a consistent basis, and at times surprised by their actions.

What bugged:

Too many plot lines, it seems to me, were introduced yet not tied up for the reader in any satisfactory capacity, as if they/the author was rushed to wind them up inadequately. I don't know kn...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Simon Lipson rated it 1 of 5 stars

You know when you see a book in the bookshop and its cover makes it stand out a bit, so you pick it up, read the blurb - which sounds interesting (notwithstanding the reference to scatological humour) and is chock-full of great reviews - then turn to a random page and it's ok, readable enough, so you think I'll take a punt and you lash out eight quid, get it home and read the first page and think, well, the page I read in the bookshop was ok, so maybe it'll pick up, and then you reach that page...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

On the basis of Darkmans and The Yips, Nicola Barker has become one of my favorites. I tend to read her when Man Booker time rolls around but plan to explore backlist shortly. The Yips is a delight, more accessible than Darkmans, I think, but no less intriguing, funny, smart. As much as I liked Bring up the Bodies (among the Longlist I've read to date), The Yips is at the top of my list currently to make the shortlist and maybe even the top prize. It would be great for Barker to get that kind of...more

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May 20, 2013 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars

I got far far too emotionally engaged with this book - something that happened to me with Darkmans too (I also really like Wide Open and Behindlings but don't remember having the same sense of involvement with them). It is a good thing but also makes reading a bit stressful. There was a lot of picking it up and putting down as I read this. Barker is good at making engaging characters, and a sense of oddly light-hearted adventure merge with and come out of mundane and slightly depressing situatio...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Nikki Mcgee rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have never read any of Nicola Barker's books before and found this hard work at the start .

It is mainly dialogue with little narration and therefore trying to work out who was who, what their role was and eventually how they were linked was confusing . I had to turn to previous online reviews so I could get this information and then I started to enjoy the book,

Parts are very funny , others were just silly. I could not read the chapter involving dog shit.

Some characters I cared about and would...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Brian Howton rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Review quoted from http://hairydogreview.com/the-yips-by...

Nicola Barker’s ninth novel, The Yips, rests upon a small mountain of accolades in the UK literary world. The book was long-listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Her previous novel, Darkmans, made it to the short list in 2007. Her book before that, Clear (2004), made it to the long list as well. And her novel Wide Open won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2000.

Clearly she is a recognized talent, though that fact may not be apparent...more Review quoted from http://hairydogreview.com/the-yips-by...

Nicola Barker’s ninth novel, The Yips, rests upon a small mountain of accolades in the UK literary world. The book was long-listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Her previous novel, Darkmans, made it to the short list in 2007. Her book before that, Clear (2004), made it to the long list as well. And her novel Wide Open won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2000.

Clearly she is a recognized talent, though that fact may not be apparent from her newest work. The Yips is an uncontrollable story. Its plot weaves around the lives of an aging golfer, a seven-time cancer survivor, a tattoo artist who specializes in permanent merkins, a vicar in the Church of England, a barmaid, a coma survivor who speaks mostly French, a sex therapist, and the therapist’s devout, Muslim wife.

What ties them all together is the work of brilliance. The plot, above everything else, shines. Barker’s scheme seems to throw this set of improbable characters into the mundane – a hotel bar at closing time, a golf resort, a vicar’s house, a small town an hour outside of London, etc. – and there to play her characters’ eccentricities off of one another until their flaws become wounds, bloody from too much picking.

Everyone in the story is harboring shame. The golfer, Stuart Ransom, is a womanizer and a boor. Years ago in the same city, Luton, one of his stray golf balls knocked a woman in the head, putting her into a coma. Lacking the insurance to compensate the family, he entered into a prolonged PR battle, at first with her husband and then with her son. The situation is still unresolved when he and her son Noel, an addict and by all accounts a flake, meet in a hotel bar when the novel begins.

The tattoo artist, Valentine, is the daughter of the comatized woman. She learned tattooing from her father, whose idolatry of National Socialism and fondness for art deco design has left her with a complex legacy to sort through. She’s an agoraphobe who dresses as a housewife from the wartime era and cares for her mother, who is constantly barking at her in a heavily-accented French.

Gene is a bartender at the hotel where Stuart and Noel meet. He also works as a meter man for the electricity company. His experience with cancer – he’s survived seven threats – has left him calm and stoical. He seems devoted to his wife Sheila, the town vicar, and a dutiful employee at all of his jobs. But his interactions with his coworker Jen, “a born flirt” he tells his wife, and his client Valentine, added to his wife’s flashes of jealousy, tests his stoic resolve to a breaking point.

Sheila, the vicar of the town, had a conversion experience one day on the train from Luton. As the concession cart wheeled past she saw the face of God. Now, having graduated from Oxford with a degree in divinity and abandoned her old life as a feminist art critic, she lives in the small town outside London with her husband Gene and her son and daughter. Unsettled and unsure of her ability as a woman in a man’s profession, she begins to pine for her old life when she runs in to Valentine and tries to entice her out of her house with the promise of an exhibition of her work in London.

Then there’s Jen, the nineteen year old minx who bartends at the hotel. She dreams of being a vet, though she bombed her A-levels despite, however, being something of a genius. She flits through the story as an element of uncertainty, attracting Ransom and fawning over Gene. She may be the most shameless character in the group outside of Nessa, Valentine’s young niece, a stubborn nudist who likes to jump on a trampoline without anything under her skirt. Jen spends the last half of the book wearing a leotard and calling herself the Goddess of Chaos.

The fact that all of these personalities have been fitted into one story should be enough to call it a success. The weakness of the book is that too often the characters seem dull. The story pulls them through it rather than being pushed by them. Barker’s creations are stillborn, words on a page whose exaggerated gestures fall a bit short of the mark.

This is not to say that the book isn’t funny. It is. But the jokes are infrequent and rarely insightful. The humor either passes within a line or it never appears. Barker never sustains the joke, rather she maintains the expectation that there will be a satisfying end. The plot is strong enough to pull a reader through, but the sum total of its parts looks flat from the other side. The ups and downs of the story seem to be mere illusions from that vantage, since so little in the end depends on their outcome, and the characters look as thin as when they were first introduced.(less)

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Nov 13, 2012 Chaitra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize-nominees, netgalley, arc-reviews, read-in-2012, screwball, reads-like-a-play, set-in-england, contemporary-fiction, humor, nicola-barker, literary-fiction

My very first Nicola Barker. For all the slogging through Booker lists I do, I've somehow never read her. I'm no golf fan, so I had no idea what "The Yips" meant when I went into this book. I also don't read synopses of books I mean to absolutely read, so I think I can be excused for thinking I would find a dark and sordid tale of pathetic humanity. (This is probably because Barker wrote a book called Darkmans. Yeah, I know she also wrote a book called Clear, but I'm weird that way). Surprise! T...more My very first Nicola Barker. For all the slogging through Booker lists I do, I've somehow never read her. I'm no golf fan, so I had no idea what "The Yips" meant when I went into this book. I also don't read synopses of books I mean to absolutely read, so I think I can be excused for thinking I would find a dark and sordid tale of pathetic humanity. (This is probably because Barker wrote a book called Darkmans. Yeah, I know she also wrote a book called Clear, but I'm weird that way). Surprise! This book is unrelentingly kooky! If you have no sense for the absurd, you have no business reading this! For all that, it's still sordid and filled with rather pathetic humans.

Let's take a count of said kooky characters, shall we? A golfer way past his prime, but doesn't want to believe it. A ditzy bartender, with a remarkable capacity for bullshit. Her boss, who also doubles as a part-time electric meter reader, a caddy, a blood donor, a stand-in owner of a Hummer and a stand-in husband for the Hummer's real owner's wife (it's about exactly as this sounds), eight times fighter of cancer (once terminal), a general human of saintly proportions. His wife (who used to be his best friend's wife), a do-gooder vicar of the Church of England, who has trouble with practicing her faith as well as sleeping with her husband.

Continuing, a drop dead gorgeous tattoo artist, who has crippling agoraphobia and who engages in a one night stand with the saint (who isn't that saintly after all, snicker). Her mother, a woman whose brain has been damaged by a stray golf ball hit by none other than our pathetic golfer. Her brother, engaged in litigation with said golfer when he's not also stoned. The mother's Muslim sex therapist, his orthodox (but slightly insane) wife and her sister, the golfer's pregnant manager who may or may not have an agenda, the manager's political activist sister and genius nephew (both of who are related to the golfer) round out the cast.

The order of the day is that none of the characters are what might be called stable. All of them are quirky, all of them are unbalanced. The nearest thing to a straight man is Gene (the saint), but he has his troubles as well. It reads like a farcical play, this can be put on stage or screen with few changes. There are laugh out loud moments, and some of the characters are brilliant. The action, the pacing, is manic. It reminds me of the Hollywood screwball comedies of 30s and 40s, where people spoke nineteen to the dozen, and I say that in a good way.

But, the downside to this energy is that it's exhausting. The book is over 500 pages, and the madness just doesn't sustain your interest for that long. Indeed, the book fizzles out rather than ending with a bang, as though the characters have just run out of things to say and do. They all have real issues, but none of them are really addressed. There are no satisfying resolutions - only haphazard, "this madness shall end now because I really can't write anymore" type ones. It's still a good, fun book, but it would have been greater still if there were a lesser number of characters (some of the characters are just padding, and didn't need their own scenes), and a tighter rein on the length this was allowed to run. Alternately, I would have loved a 500 page book with some meat in it, rather than just a random series of stuff.

I got a copy of this book via NetGalley for review.(less)

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Jan 16, 2013 Giney rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the story of a washed-up golfer who has slightly lost sight of his place in the universe, or rather refuses to acknowledge that he is not its centre. Yet this is not a story about golf, this is a story about people. In Luton.

Nicola Barker can write, this is clear for the first page of this somewhat sport-related tale. In a few sentences she is able to set up places, situations and characters. Particularly the dialogue in this novel is involving, full of personality and fun. Unfortunately...more This is the story of a washed-up golfer who has slightly lost sight of his place in the universe, or rather refuses to acknowledge that he is not its centre. Yet this is not a story about golf, this is a story about people. In Luton.

Nicola Barker can write, this is clear for the first page of this somewhat sport-related tale. In a few sentences she is able to set up places, situations and characters. Particularly the dialogue in this novel is involving, full of personality and fun. Unfortunately, this is not enough to make this a stand out novel. There are a few bigger issues at hand. Firstly, the novel is overlong. The reader is introduced to quite a large cast of characters who, over the course of the story, are or become involved in each other’s lives. While this at times feels a little too neatly pulled together, this is not strictly a problem. However, the novel’s length means that certain scenes drag on for too long and characters’ ‘quirky behaviour’ is unnecessarily repeated in scenes that feel too similar.

This leads into the second issue: the credibility of these characters. Barker introduces us to a wide selection of voices who rarely feature centre stage in fiction. Here, Luton plays host to the biggest bunch of misfits folded into the pages of a book in a long time. Certainly Barker is daring in her approach and in the characters she chooses to portray. The problem is that none of these characters seem real. Their motivation is muddled at best: this seems to get lost in a desire to create amusing dialogues and set pieces.

It should be said, however, that Barker’s female characters are distinctive and diverse. At first sight perhaps easy stereotypes they are revealed to be much more than that. Their voices are fresh and in this we find the novel’s biggest asset. For example the introduction of the young Muslim woman Milah. Her conversations with Valentine come as a surprise and are genuinely something new and enjoyably non-clichéd. Barker should be praised for finding the poignancy and fun in the everyday qualities and conversations shared between these two young women. The way Barker weaves these two sides of the coin together means there are brief flickers of something genuinely daring and thought provoking. Yet, it would be equally true to say that these exchanges come off more as a fine bit of imagination than a realistic portrayal.

Perhaps we should simply take this novel to be a satirical look at the (fleeting) nature of fame, the romanticisation of the past and an exposé on the seedy awfulness that is golf. The novel is not without merit: there is enjoyment to be had, undoubtedly more if it had been ruthlessly edited down. The lingering thought is that Barker is a writer with heaps of qualities and ideas and that this novel doesn’t quite do them justice.(less)

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May 05, 2013 Hannah Mckiddie rated it 1 of 5 stars

I loved Darkmans so when I saw this in the library I took it out straight away. At page 50 I started to wonder what the point of this book was. Read the cover and realised that its meant to be funny. At page 100 still hadn't found a single thing even remotely humorous, got incredibly annoyed with the terrible dialogue, awful characters and dull (non-existent?) plot and gave up. I hate not finishing books, even if I'm not really enjoying them but this is not worth wasting any more of my time on.

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Apr 21, 2013 Nick rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had been wanting to read this book for a while but was very disappointed. The story is centred around an obnoxious golfer and starts in a bar of a hotel. The other characters work in that bar. There seemed to be a lot of dialogue and lots of different characters appeared to be randomly thrown in so it was difficult to focus on one aspect of the story. There was also some predictable writing and poor jokes thrown in as if to fill up space.

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Apr 19, 2013 Matt Rohweder rated it 1 of 5 stars

I started this book earlier this week and after a number of attempts to get into it, I just had to admit defeat. I'm not sure if its the subject matter - finding almost everything about golf utterly dull - or if I just could not get into the writing, but something just held me back from enjoying this book. Every review told me that I would like it and I love British comedic fiction, so I'm not sure what prevented me from liking the book.

I would encourage anyone interested to pick it up and see...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Penny rated it 2 of 5 stars

I don't know if this book just went right over my head or it just wasn't to my taste but I can honestly say that I don't know what the point of it was. There were so many interesting (or crazy, depending on your perspective... I would lean towards crazy) characters but there didn't really seem to be a plot. Lots of things happened, sure, but I never really understood why they did and I didn't really care to find out.

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Aug 31, 2012 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: man-booker

I've just finished The Yips. It's weird, but I liked it, farsical in a way that Skios was not, interesting inter-woven storyline, complex but interesting narrative twists and turns - ended a bit abruptly I thought, but all in all I think it might be a contender for the Man Booker short list at least... I'm actually skim reading it again, it's that good.

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Aug 08, 2012 sisterimapoet rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-2012

For the first two-hundred pages I felt like I’d tuned in to a rather odd soap opera that I don’t usually watch, struggling to get to grips with it’s strange characters. Thankfully then, a glimmer of a plot began to appear, a sense of how these characters might start to connect and that made the following 300 pages more enjoyable.

The second half felt more real, deeper and darker and not just played for laughs – and as ever Barker’s characters are delightfully flawed and peculiar. I’m not sure the...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Theo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: what-good-writing-looks-like

Difficult one to score. It's a good book and a great example of how you can use dialogue tags other than "said" and get away with it; the characters, for the most part, hooked me, but there are a lot of them and, at times, I had difficulties keeping them and their complex inter-relationships straight (but it's also worth mentioning that I am inept). It's three stars, but it's a high three stars - definitely one to try yourself.

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Feb 02, 2013 Linnet rated it 1 of 5 stars

Gene is a genial bartender/meter reader. His wife is a minister. Ransom is a fading pro golfer. Esther and Vicki are Jamaicans, brought to Luton because Esther is Ransom's publicist. And then there is Valentine the agoraphobic tattoo artist. Mix these characters into one (very long!) book and you have The Yips!

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Mar 15, 2013 Uttam added it

if talented people with their anxieties come together ,if they create an hilarious uproar it plays as the story "the yips".stuart ransom,incorrigible swearer ,abuser,talented golfer trying to recover golf block is surrounded by his admirers and haters.valentine is a tattoo artist stuck up with her mom who lost her mind in an accident.gene cancer survivor ,mechanic who loves his wife sheila and falls for valentine .jen is a teenage maid who ca'nt stop talking for a moment.all their lives are conn...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Suzanne rated it 1 of 5 stars

couldn't finish it. the writing style gave me anxiety. not at all the type of book that draws me in; the writing style, lack of character building and plot development was dissapointing to say the least.

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Aug 24, 2012 Ag rated it 1 of 5 stars

Really struggling to say anything positive about this book. Only positive is that I've finished it. Total waste of time, over written, trying too hard and simply not the slightest bit funny.

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BookerMarks: Know Your Booker!: The Yips	1	3	Sep 03, 2012 08:35am
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About Nicola Barker

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Nicola Barker is an English writer.
Nicola Barker’s eight previous novels include Darkmans (short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden Prize), Wide Open (winner of the 2000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and Clear (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2...more

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“Tattoos are a right of passage. They're a marker of bravery, of maturity, of cultural acceptance. The tattoo represents not only a willingness to accept pain - to endure it - but a need to actively embrace it. Because life is painful - beautiful but painful.......” — 31 people liked it

“The trigger has been squeezed, the deathly mechanism has been enabled, the fatal course of a bullet has been set. No amount of bleating or praying or wailing of cajoling can halt it or stall it or call it back.” — 1 person liked it

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