false 323208 12 Good fences may make good neighbors, but in Magnus Mills's first novel, bad fences make for high tension indeed. An eerie <I>noir</I> fable told in a grim, deadpan voice, <I>The Restraint of Beasts</I> begins as an unnamed English fence builder finds himself promoted to foreman over Tam and Richie, two undermotivated Scots laborers. They've just been sent out to fix a high-tension fence when events go horribly awry--and that's just the beginning. For the rest of the novel, as his charges drink, smoke, loaf, and pound the occasional post, things go wrong over and over again. In a sense, that's all you can truly rely on in Mills's fictional world. It is not giving away too much to say that with these particular fencers on the job, you'd best watch your back. And your front, for that matter. And maybe keep a firm eye on the skies, just in case.<p> The team travels south to England, where they live out of a damp, cold caravan in the town of Upper Bowland. They're soon at loggerheads with the sinister Hall brothers, whose business enterprises seem to combine fencing, butchering, sausage-making, and a fierce attachment to school meals. <p> In between placing Kafkaesque obstacles in his narrator's path, Mills seeds his debut with small, darkly comic touches: Tam's father, whom we last see erecting a stockade round his house "to stop you from coming home any more"; the sound of Richie's Black Sabbath tapes "slowly being stretched in an under-powered cassette player"; the caravan's encroaching squalor; <I>An Early Bath for Thompson</I>, the book that Richie tries without success to read. No doubt about it, <I>The Restraint of Beasts</I> is a strange novel that only grows stranger as it progresses; with luck, it augurs more brilliant, odd work from Mills. <I>--Mary Park</I> 1310862 5 10 1999 The Restraint of Beasts total:256|5:67|4:123|3:54|2:9|1:3| 256 1010 355 47 5 1 false false Sun May 04 07:43:45 -0700 2008 Sun May 04 07:44:50 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 02 11:01:50 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 20 12:00:29 -0800 2008 Restraint of Beasts comes on as an utterly unremarkable account of manual labor but slowly, oh so slowly, cranks up the absurdity at a steady pace until the very abrupt end of the novel. By removing the lens through which we view our daily lives--and then throwing i...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Jan 29 11:40:19 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 29 11:44:49 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Feb 25 09:23:26 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 26 00:50:32 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Jan 11 19:35:25 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 13 16:57:25 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false true Wed Nov 27 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Sat Jul 25 22:14:25 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 22:20:06 -0700 2009
Booker group discussion December 2003

Tom and Richie - two Glaswegians fencing labourers can only be bribed to work if they can look forward to wiping themselves out at the pub every night.

Their foreman learns to cope with their idiosyncracies and conced...more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Apr 04 07:43:15 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 29 22:03:04 -0700 2008 4 1 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Wed Jul 09 13:04:32 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 09 13:14:06 -0700 2008 5 1 false false Wed Jun 04 10:26:55 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 04 10:28:48 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Fri Nov 06 11:56:56 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 06 12:07:30 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Oct 01 12:18:38 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 01 12:21:37 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Sun Dec 14 07:49:25 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 14 07:50:36 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat May 09 00:00:00 -0700 1998 Sat Jan 03 07:11:45 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 03 07:16:15 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri May 15 13:05:55 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 13:08:10 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Aug 29 17:05:23 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 17:08:38 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Jul 31 13:55:52 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 13:56:56 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Feb 16 16:13:11 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 16:15:58 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Thu Jan 08 02:15:50 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 02:17:43 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Thu Sep 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 13 18:30:28 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 18 20:45:27 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun Nov 23 16:19:29 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 23 16:20:04 -0800 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=323208