Boxer, Beetle

Aug 26, 2012 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: filthy people who love boxing

Shelves: ww2, planes-trains-automobiles, biblioteca, wtf-ending

This book is dirty. I mean, Beauman's sentences are filled with words that make you feel scummy and grimy and all kinds of disgusting. Like you have to clean your ears out. That's a compliment. This book has things that interest me - WWII Nazi memorabilia collecting, science, boxing, crazy hijinks - and it's pretty damn good writing for Beauman's first time around.

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Sep 07, 2012 Mmars rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really 3.5

When I was about the same age as Ned Beauman was when he wrote this book, I read a lot of Vonnegut. I bring his up, not to compare Beaumann to Vonnegut, but to discuss how times have changed. Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut's take on the Dresden bombing) was a creative tour de force that, in my opinion, is still unparalleled. It had strong appeal to young radical minds of the times. Boxer, Beetle has that same appeal. But this would undoubtedly have been considered too offensive for any...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Allan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: early, reviewer, book

Boxer, Beetle is wonderfully written. Funny, raw and true to its mark, every sentence and phrase is jewel-like but not at all precious. The humor is dark and deadly. Grit underfoot and the taste of blood...rusty barbed wire and macabre death.[return][return]The novel begins in the present day with Kevin “Fishy” Broom who suffers from trimethylaminuria, a rare condition that leaves him smelling horribly like rotting fish! He collects and deals in Nazi memorabilia. [return][return]Fishy is a stran...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Collectors

Recommended to Alan by: Subsequent work

I did it backward, coming at Boxer, Beetle after reading Ned Beauman's newer novel, The Teleportation Accident. This is a briefer and less polished work, not nearly as entertaining as its successor. But still, it has its appeal.

That's not due to its characters, though, who are almost without exception repellent individuals. Kevin Broom, the collector and reseller of Nazi memorabilia whom we meet first, actually turns out to be one of the less reprehensible members of Beauman's crew of dissolute...more I did it backward, coming at Boxer, Beetle after reading Ned Beauman's newer novel, The Teleportation Accident. This is a briefer and less polished work, not nearly as entertaining as its successor. But still, it has its appeal.

That's not due to its characters, though, who are almost without exception repellent individuals. Kevin Broom, the collector and reseller of Nazi memorabilia whom we meet first, actually turns out to be one of the less reprehensible members of Beauman's crew of dissolute souls. There's also Grublock, another collector though with much more money and fewer qualms. It's Grublock who sets Broom on the trail of a decades-old mystery, prompted by a letter written to an obscure British entomologist and would-be eugenicist named Philip Erskine in 1936 by the rather less obscure Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler, thanking Erskine for an unnamed gift.

And so, a mystery. What could Philip Erskine, bug-hunter and expert on breeding, possibly have given Hitler to elicit such a response? Conceivably something quite valuable—if not to the world at large, then at least to closeted collectors like Broom and Grublock.

Adding to the mystery is the relationship between Erskine and the boxer of the title, a short, scrappy, indefatigable Jewish pugilist named Seth "Sinner" Roach. Erskine begins simply by watching Roach in the ring, but later treats Roach more as an experimental subject, those aspirations toward eugenicism rearing its misshapen head yet again.

Sinner, of course, has his own ideas about his and Erskine's partnership...

It seems fairly obvious that Beauman, despite inserting himself into the ranks of online posters on Nazi memorabilia collectors' forums, holds little sympathy for the Nazis or their hangers-on. He is, to coin a phrase, taking the piss out of the National Socialists, the Fascists in Italy, and of course Britain's own home-grown crop of Blackshirts past and present. There's a marvelous scene at a dinner party full of Fascists, for example, where Philip's sister Evelyn Erskine, one of the few consistently likeable characters in the novel, deconstructs her dining companions' self-contradictory stereotyping of the Jews, and does it so deftly that they don't even notice!

But still, though, it's uncomfortable to read so much poisonous talk, however cleverly defused. Many, if not most, of the characters in Boxer, Beetle are seeing the Nazis sympathetically (or at least reserving judgement), during their rise to prominence, before their views were quite so obviously ridiculous and threatening to the world at large. Beauman's portrayal of the widespread anti-Semitism that was common discourse during the 1930s in Britain (and, to be fair, in the U.S. as well—though in this novel America makes only a brief appearance) is accurate, breathtaking, and deeply disturbing. This is often a very funny book, but it isn't always an enjoyable one.

It's not so much the characters themselves and their discourse that make this book worth reading anyway, though, although those are well-drawn. Beauman's interweaving of past and present, his knowing eye and light yet powerful prose... those are some of the more compelling factors that make Boxer, Beetle, despite or perhaps because of its daring treatment of its topic, into something worthwhile.(less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Phil Thron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Would have rated this a bit higher if the star rating system allowed more breadth. This is a terrific, genre-defying first novel by a writer with a very unique voice and vision. Beauman's humor is edgy and endlessly surprising. His first paragraph ponders what it was like on Goebbel's 43rd birthday. He wonders if perhaps Hitler had planned a surprise party, making believe he'd forgotten, going about his business giving assignments to U-Boats, causing his friend emotional dismay, only to find som...more Would have rated this a bit higher if the star rating system allowed more breadth. This is a terrific, genre-defying first novel by a writer with a very unique voice and vision. Beauman's humor is edgy and endlessly surprising. His first paragraph ponders what it was like on Goebbel's 43rd birthday. He wonders if perhaps Hitler had planned a surprise party, making believe he'd forgotten, going about his business giving assignments to U-Boats, causing his friend emotional dismay, only to find some pretext of bringing him into a cocktail lounge at the last minute. The idea is delightfully left of center and his description of Goebbel's response had me laughing out loud. The very idea is unusual and audacious. And I loved it.

Much of the novel is set in England during the mid 30s, with the framing story set in present day and a brief sojourn 2 generations even further in the past. Fascism, eugenics, existentialism, pugilism, entomology, and more combine to create a very unique read. The author presents us with full-blooded characters, many of whom are difficult to like but most of whom are endlessly fascinating.

The present day protagonist, Kevin "Fishy" Broom, is a collector of Nazi memorabilia. He also has a condition that literally makes him smell like bad fish, which keeps him segregated from most society. So he becomes a larger than life version of the already larger than life stereotypical geek collector. His obsession leads him to a mystery, of course, which helps propel the 30s narrative involving Philip Erskine, a Brit enymologist, who happens to be a fascist obsessed with eugenics. His personal predilections bring him into contact with Sinner, the most fascinating character in the book. Sinner is a fierce, undersized Jewish street tough from the mean streets who has turned his talent for violence into a promising boxing career. How these characters interact is the stuff of surprise and intrique. It is challenging, sometimes violent, funny, and thought-provoking.

Beauman is an author to watch. He has a new book coming out in a few weeks, "The Teleportation Accident: A Novel". I look forward eagerly to this work to see what his sophomore effort brings. (less)

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Oct 21, 2012 Trixie Fontaine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-books-consumed

Entertaining & unique. I picked it up because the word "HILARIOUS" is on the cover. Plus I like boxing, AND I, too, spent time raising/breeding beetles (warning: that link is to a post about my beetles on my NOT WORK SAFE blog)!

I did LOL a few times at the beginning, but kept reading it for the story and characters and wanting it to just turn into Seth Roach Fucks The World With His Fingers In Its Butthole. I think I loved him the way Evelyn did.

The book feels incomplete to me without Kevin...more

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Mar 01, 2012 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Beauman has a thorough command of the English language and a verbose vocabulary. Words do not make a good book; however, stories make good books. And when it comes down to it, the story in Boxer, Beetle is only remotely entertaining. Amidst sexual deviation and remotely connected subplots that made me think Beauman was poorly attempting to emulate Neal Stephenson, the story revolves around a Nazi memorabilia collector who lacks the financial ability to make a true impact or establish a financial...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction, humor, horror

The title reflects the two main characters and the story more-or-less revolves around their philosophies, lives and interactions. They subtly and overtly brutalize one another.

The character of Seth Roach, aptly named, is a Jewish survivor in the sense that a cockroach is a survivor. He is practically all animal drive and he's brutal. He's also homosexual but earns that title only sexually- in every other way he's just a brute.

The other character is also homosexual, intellectual, refined, effete....more

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Aug 25, 2011 martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

I bought this mostly for the wrong reasons - the cover design, the publisher's blurb and the mention of the Guardian award shortlisting (turns out he has written for the Guardian...) - but didn't regret it. Didn't think it was amazing either, though.

Sure, it's creative and innovative (and probably incredibly well-researched) but I really found it a bit immature at times. I smiled most at some of the moments of simple farce rather than the often clever but ultimately not too successful satire of...more

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May 02, 2011 Morris rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you like Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union) or Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction (see clip below) among others), you'll enjoy the debut novel by Ned Beauman, Boxer Beetle (available in the US in August 2011; available from the UK now). It is a fun, eccentric and well-executed novel with a wild cast of characters.

First, there is Kevin "Fishy" Broom, a modern day dealer in Nazi memorabilia, who suffers from from trimethylaminuria: a ra...more

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Nov 05, 2011 Subliminal Maybe rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel had an interesting mash up of ideas ; Nazi memorabilia and eugenics theory + boxing + entomology - but where it failed to go from good to great was in characterization. Though I did get a laugh out of Fishy's condition (i'll have to look that up to see if it actually exists) I loved the cover and the praise on the front and back was pretty convincing. I just felt like it could have been executed a little better. A decent debut for author Ned Beauman to be sure, but ultimately still a...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Blair rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: past-and-present, favourites

One of the great things about going to the library is that sometimes, completely by chance, you spot books you've previously read or heard about, added to a mental wishlist and then completely forgotten. This is exactly what happened with Boxer, Beetle. It caught my eye and I immediately recalled having heard something good about it on TV (I think on The Culture Show or something), and the rapturous reviews quoted all over the jacket helped me to decide to borrow it. But I probably wouldn't have...more One of the great things about going to the library is that sometimes, completely by chance, you spot books you've previously read or heard about, added to a mental wishlist and then completely forgotten. This is exactly what happened with Boxer, Beetle. It caught my eye and I immediately recalled having heard something good about it on TV (I think on The Culture Show or something), and the rapturous reviews quoted all over the jacket helped me to decide to borrow it. But I probably wouldn't have remembered it, otherwise. I'm so grateful for this bit of serendipity, because the book is brilliant.

The bulk of the story takes place in the mid-1930s, centering on two very different characters: Seth 'Sinner' Roach, a tough and very violent gay Jewish boxer, and Philip Erskine, a timid student of both eugenics and fascism who is in denial about his own homosexuality. Erskine becomes obsessed with Sinner, (barely) concealing his lust by claiming he needs to examine him as part of a experiment in genetics, and Sinner is forced to accept Erskine's offer to 'buy' him after his boxing career stalls and he succumbs to alcoholism. Meanwhile, Erskine is also attempting to breed an invincible species of eyeless beetle with markings that resemble a swastika, which he names after his hero - Hitler. This dominant strand of the plot is combined with a sprinkling of chapters set in the present day, in which Kevin 'Fishy' Broom (so nicknamed because of an unfortunate medical condition, trimethylaminuria), a collector and dealer in Nazia memorabilia, comes across a letter from Hitler to Erskine. Finding himself pursued by a Welsh assassin, he becomes drawn into the mystery of Erskine's research and what became of Sinner - who, as far as history is concerned, seems to have vanished after a disastrous conference of fascists at a country house in 1936, at which a scandalous murder took place.

The front and back covers are full of newspaper hyperbole - 'dazzling', 'terrific', 'gripping', 'hilarious', 'exhilarating'. All of these are accurate. The plot, while appealingly original in itself, doesn't really sum up all that's good about the novel, and I'm not sure I'm up to the task either; you simply need to read this book and you're just going to have to take my word for it. It's completely compelling, very exciting and vastly intelligent, reminding me of a Jonathan Coe book in several ways - the well-researched historical detail which will have you constantly checking Wikipedia to find out if this or that is real or the author's invention, the labyrinthine conversations, and the high quota of coincidences, some unacknowledged. It's also incredibly funny. I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud this much while reading. The characters are fantastic - repulsive but endearing Kevin, potentially brilliant but self-destructive Sinner, and Erskine, who you should hate but can't help feeling a weird sympathy for, with his bumbling, awkward manner and complete lack of self-knowledge. On top of this it has wonderful character names, excellent sex scenes (such a rare thing) and so much atmosphere - there's a brief interlude set in New York, and even though it's just one short chapter, the sense of time and place is note-perfect.

If I had to make a criticism here, it would be that some sequences of events unfold too quickly and conveniently to be realistic. But who cares, when it's such tremendous fun to read? The final thing to note about this book is that Ned Beauman is YOUNGER THAN ME. I should hate him for making me feel like an unaccomplished foolish failure, but just I loved the book too much.(less)

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Jan 04, 2013 Kate Sherrod rated it 3 of 5 stars

Nazis! Nazi memorabilia collectors! Boxers! Boxing promoters! Insects! Entomologists! Sufferers of trimethylaminuria! People who have to work with and smell them!The ecosystem of Ned Beauman's Boxer, Beetle is complicated and repulsive, but wound up not being quite as compelling as other reviewers have made it sound.

The novel intertwines two narratives and two timelines in the now-classic format of a historical narrative being chased down by a modern explorer. In the 21st century, we have a youn...more Nazis! Nazi memorabilia collectors! Boxers! Boxing promoters! Insects! Entomologists! Sufferers of trimethylaminuria! People who have to work with and smell them!The ecosystem of Ned Beauman's Boxer, Beetle is complicated and repulsive, but wound up not being quite as compelling as other reviewers have made it sound.

The novel intertwines two narratives and two timelines in the now-classic format of a historical narrative being chased down by a modern explorer. In the 21st century, we have a young man named Fishy (so named for his unfortunate, genetically-determined body chemistry and the odors it produces), who conducts internet auctions of historical artifacts at his day job, and has a special sideline in the Nazi memorabilia trade for a hobby, and whose latest mysterious pursuit (alongside a nasty gun-toting freelancer who is killing his way to a new find) leads him to start exploring the story of a British entomologist, fascist and eugenics enthusiast and the diminutive Jewish boxer whom the entomologist manipulates into becoming the subject of some, err, special research in 1936.

Trimethylaminuria is neither played up for laughs (something I was kind of expecting-with-a-cringe from the novel's earliest pages) nor presented as a subject for our compassion or pity (though in real life lots of sufferers wind up committing suicide as a result of the social isolation it tends to impose, the Gordon Crisps of the world aside) as it stands in, in the modern timeline, for all of the things about humanity eugenicists want to eliminate (in 1936, of course, they're much more blatant and reprehensible about it). For Fishy it's just a fact in his life, albeit one that has dealt him out of the reproductive sweepstakes far more effectively than anything the eugenicists of yesteryear would have dared to dream of. He's got bigger concerns as the novel unfolds, like surviving and escaping from his weird captor. Or so it would seem as the novel gets going, but then Fishy and the gunman disappear except for quick and pointless interludes. Fishy's disorder winds up being kind of a punchline for the novel, but otherwise, there really isn't much point to his being in it. Which is a shame.

Meanwhile, Philip Erskine's story (1936) is a study in multiform ickiness, not because he specializes in carrion-eating/carnivorous insects, but because of his and his family's matter-of-fact fascism and anti-semetism and, while we're at it, classism. For Erskine is a character straight out of Michel Houellebecq, that French novelist I so love to hate and hate to love. Amid all of his other passions and pretenses are little observations like this one, made while he tries to address the difficult problem of how to masturbate when sharing a cabin and a bed with a professional colleague: "Why couldn't one just go to the doctor every month to have one's semen, this irrational fluid, syringed off like the pus from a boil."

This long before he is shown regarding a semen sample demanded from his boxer specimen as "ootheca", a term usually reserved for the egg case of members of that insect family that contains mantises and cockroaches, thus demonstrating just how human he thinks Seth Roach isn't (and lest one think Roach is by any stretch of the imagination a sympathetic figure or victim, he's just biding his time until he can go out again and get rip-roaring drunk and beat the crap out of whatever "toff" is foolish enough to take him home. There's rough sex, and there's what Roach does. Yikes.).

So, like Arslan before it in my reading this year, this is a fairly repellent and ugly book, but this time unredeemed by beautiful prose. Beauman takes great, gleeful pleasure in giving us a close look at some of the greatest ugliness humanity has ever produced, and at the people who allowed it to flourish largely because they were happy to admire it from a distance. Erskine, for instance, is, in addition to all the other icky things he is, such a fan of Adolf Hitler's that he goes so far as to breed a stronger, nastier, more belligerent strain of an eyeless beetle he originally discovered in a cave in the Poland the Fuhrer is soon to invade, all so that there might be an insect worthy of being named after his hero.

And then there's the boxer, all four foot eleven of him, nine-toed Seth Roach, descended from immigrants chased away by pogroms from the environs of the cave where Erskine found his breeding stock, the kind of gay man who embraces the idea that his preferences are considered perversions and who not only lets himself get roped into being Erskine's study subject, but into coming along to a fateful conference that is supposed to be about artificial languages (think Esperanto, only weirder and more fiddly) but winds up being something rather more vile.

But hey, sometimes, at least, Boxer, Beetle is funny, as when we come, midway through the book, to a description of Erskine's ancestral home, which his father had determined to modernize so thoroughly that it would still be modern in a hundred years. Rube Goldberg isn't in it. I could have maybe used more of this kind of thing for my tour through the slime -- especially in a novel that is promoted as "hilarious." Had I been looking for belly laughs instead of bugs, I might have been annoyed at the paucity of the former (as it was, I could have used more of the latter, but that's what Daniel Evan Weiss' debut was for. And Tyler Knox's for that matter). As it stands, well, this is the first novel of a young man of undoubted talent but who maybe bit off a bit much for his first project. His second, The Teleportation Accident, was long-listed for the Man Booker this year, and sounds interesting enough for me to give it another chance, but on the strength of the subject matter more than of his writing as I've seen it so far.

Anyway, it doesn't sound like it's quite as filthy.(less)

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Dec 09, 2012 Ajay rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Boxer, Beetle is a novel that spans genres. It is at once a screwball comedy (albeit of the darker variety), a thriller and a political satire. Ned Beauman juggles these roles quite competently over the book. The characters are bizarre and funny; most of them are despicable too. The dialogue sparkles with plenty of profanity thrown in, you can almost imagine them being spoken in a Brit accent. As the blurb says, this is the script to the Tarantino film that was never made. That rings true throug...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Boxer, Beetle" is a novel taking place in two different times: the present day, and the mid 1930s.

In the present day, our first person narrator is a Nazi memorablia collector and odd jobs man for a much richer collector. He's suffering from a genetic condition that makes him smell bad, so he lives most of his life on the internet, except, very little of that is in the novel: we join him as he finds himself tasked with resolving a mystery. Soon, dead bodies are piling up.

Meanwhile, the mystery i...more "Boxer, Beetle" is a novel taking place in two different times: the present day, and the mid 1930s.

In the present day, our first person narrator is a Nazi memorablia collector and odd jobs man for a much richer collector. He's suffering from a genetic condition that makes him smell bad, so he lives most of his life on the internet, except, very little of that is in the novel: we join him as he finds himself tasked with resolving a mystery. Soon, dead bodies are piling up.

Meanwhile, the mystery is all about a short, young Jewish boxer and a scientist passionate about eugenics in the 1930s. This plotline follows the career and ups and downs of the boxer, and the British scientist who wants to use the boxer for experiments. Until he can achieve this aim, he has to contend himself with working on beetles.

The book is pleasantly entertaining, fast-paced and quite readable. It does occasionally allow itself a whopper of purple prose or two, though. Could there ever be a dafter sentence to start a chapter with than "The morning light peeked in through the windows of the mortuary, pasty and trembling like the sort of ghoulish little boy who would rather see a dead girl than a naked one" ?

The plot gets a little crazy, especially towards the end, when all the carefully built up attempts at authenticity go out of the window in favour of a finale that reeks of B-movie scifi. It's a book that wants to be a bit literary, but also pulp fiction, so we get repressed homosexuality, confident homosexuality, a murder mystery, a conspiracy theory thriller, a rise-and-fall chronicle of a boxer's career, a satire (with a lengthy, dialogue heavy conference of fascists, beset by petty personality conflicts and politicking), all in one relatively short book. It might aspire to be literary, but in the end it feels quite shallow: it feels a bit like a Quentin Tarantino movie, though more restrained in the first two thirds of its narrative. The book certainly squeezes a lot of ideas, anecdotes and themes into the novel.

It would be a 3.5 star rating if that were available: quite okay, but not brilliant.(less)

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Jan 06, 2012 Garry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Chapter 1: A collector of Nazi memorabilia with a disease that makes him reek of fish
Chapter 2: A midget Jewish homosexual boxer thug with nine toes
Chapter 3: A pompous English dandy who is trying to selectively breed the Hitler-beetle

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to realise that Boxer Beetle is unlike anything you've ever read.

I came very close to abandoning this book. The first few chapters seemed to be drafted so as to deliberately shock the reader. They were unnecessarily coarse, wit...more Chapter 1: A collector of Nazi memorabilia with a disease that makes him reek of fish
Chapter 2: A midget Jewish homosexual boxer thug with nine toes
Chapter 3: A pompous English dandy who is trying to selectively breed the Hitler-beetle

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to realise that Boxer Beetle is unlike anything you've ever read.

I came very close to abandoning this book. The first few chapters seemed to be drafted so as to deliberately shock the reader. They were unnecessarily coarse, with the kind of language that would make a school librarian blanch. I felt offended by something, but I can't put my finger on exactly what it was that offended me - I think it might have had something to do with the manner in which the Nazi storyline was introduced. There were so many names and concepts flying around in the first few pages that I struggled to keep up. And just when I was starting to think that the author was a smug brat, he inserted himself into the story in the form of an nbeauman internet nick, which only appeared to confirm my suspicion.

Despite all this, I didn't abandon it.

And after the shock of the opening chapters I got into it. Maybe the language toned down a bit, maybe I got used to the pace, maybe the author stopped trying to be clever and focused on the story. Or maybe it was the wonderful characters or the intriguing plot that took over. Whatever it was, I ended up really enjoying the experience and feeling sad that it had to end.

My quibbles about its opening aside, Boxer Beetle is a well written novel - the language really does sparkle when you give it a chance. And despite my initial reservations about its early frenetic pace, it did settle down into an incredibly tight piece of work. Also impressive was the way that the threads were tied up; sad as I was to finish the book, I was also satisfied with the way it ended.

I can recommend Boxer Beetle (but maybe not for the school library).

To close this review... a line from the book from the gay boxer's perspective, which I found particularly delicious...

"Like rotten fruit, women's bodies were too soft, yielded too easily."(less)

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Mar 24, 2011 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: genre-historical

When I'm browsing in a bookstore, I give a book approximately one paragraph to capture my interest before I move on. This book passed that test with flying colors.

In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels' forty-third birthday party. I like to think that even in the busy autumn of 1940, Hitler might have found time to oragnise a surprise party for his close friend - pretending for weeks that the date had slipped his mind, deliberately ignoring the Propaganda M...more When I'm browsing in a bookstore, I give a book approximately one paragraph to capture my interest before I move on. This book passed that test with flying colors.

In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels' forty-third birthday party. I like to think that even in the busy autumn of 1940, Hitler might have found time to oragnise a surprise party for his close friend - pretending for weeks that the date had slipped his mind, deliberately ignoring the Propaganda Minister's increasingly sulky and awkward hints, and waiting until the very last order had been dispatched to his U-boat commanders on the evening of Tuesday, 29 October before he led Goebbels on some pretext into the cocktail lounge of the Reich Chancellery. A great should of "Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!', a cascade of streamers, some relieved and perhaps even slightly tearful laughter for Goebbels himself as he embraced the Führer, and the party could begin.

Part scientific exploration (ish), part love story (ish), and part treasure hunt, the real meat of this story was in its utterly deplorable yet strangely lovable characters. "Fishy," who is imagining the birthday party mentioned above, is a modern-day lock-in, stricken with a condition that makes him smell like week-old fish; Seth "Sinner" Roach, a vertically challenged, strangely handsome, alcoholic, Jewish boxer; Philip Erskine, an utterly ridiculous entomologist, fascist, and Hitler admirer.

I'm guessing Sinner was supposed to be the star of this book, but for me it was Erskine. Sinner was angry, mean, vindictive, self-destructive, and utterly unrepentant. Erskine was a fascist and eugenicist and you don't want to like him, but he's so bumbling, so awkward and uncomfortable in his own skin that you can't help, at the very least, be amused by him. As it was, I grew to have the same affection you might have for a slightly retarded dog that continually ran into walls; that is, pitying. And despite the gravity that becomes very immediate in his relationship with Sinner near the end of the book, I could never quite take him seriously.

Several times, this book made me laugh out loud. The style of writing is simultaneously flip and evocative which makes for a very engrossing, very fast read. Watching Sinner's and Erskine's relationship--I almost want to put quotes around the word--develop is like watching a train wreck. Following Fishy's present day treasure hunt (did I mention the Welsh hitman?) lent an extra sense of mystery to what was happening back in '34.

This is definitely a book I'd recommend to friends... as long as they have a well-developed sense of humor.(less)

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May 21, 2011 Nickie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Morrissey's wet dream - East End boxers of the '30s, man on man action, Nazis, eugenics. IT'S ALL HERE STEPHEN. And it's written by a twenty six year old, which would usually put me off, but luckily I'd already read the most excellent first paragraph (see below) before I discovered this. You can tell that it's his first novel - just a few bits of over-writing here and there, and the self-conscious similes that litter sections of it. If only his editor had removed these or said something. I think...more

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Dec 26, 2011 Donovan Richards rated it 3 of 5 stars

What Pawn Stars Can Tell Us about Nazis

A couple weeks ago, I watched an episode of Pawn Stars. Setting aside its obvious staged events and scripted dialogue, the show carries an appeal for those interested in the artifacts of history. In fact, I venture a guess that most hope to see someone bringing in an object similar to their family’s prized heirloom wishing that the value of the object is astronomical.

Well in this specific episode, someone wanted to sell the pawn shop some Nazi memorabilia....more

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Feb 04, 2013 Anna rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a very strange novel. Entertaining and compelling, but strange. There's a gay Jewish boxer, a variety of incompetent fascists, and an obsessive collector of Nazi memorabilia. The pacing was a bit odd, sometimes rushing, sometimes languorously tangential, and the plot seemed to enjoy dancing around the line of being totally offensive. I also wouldn't recommend it to anyone with even a slight phobia of beetles. Nonetheless, I was diverted. Some more female characters would have been nice,...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Kyrill rated it 4 of 5 stars

I find history boring. British history doubly so. It is with surprise then that for the first time in my life I should find not one but two books that deal with with early 20th century Britain in a way that is so innovative and energetic that I reluctantly take an interest in the rich context. The first is "C" by Tom McCarthy, this is the second. The characters in the first part of the book are utterly compelling and engaging, although there are a few moments of excessive melodrama and out of ch...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Gareth Lewis rated it 5 of 5 stars

I remember almost nothing of this book, mainly because I read it last year in an appropriately roach infested bedsit in damp September Hove. But it has stuck with me nonetheless. Beauman was 25 when he wrote it (and I was 25 when I read it), news of which left me flooded with anxiety and envy. It is meticulously and rather evidently 'researched', that is to say referentiality is a key part of its identity. This is something writers like David Foster Wallace, but also comedians like Stewart Lee,...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Blue rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A massive exploration into eugenics, Boxer, Beetle is ambitious. The two main characters are self-loathing bastards, though their self-destruction manifests itself in different ways. It's a man's world, so the only woman who comes close to being a main character is somehow more well-adjusted (perhaps because she is straight and the men are not straight.) The narrator doesn't seem to be a main character to me, because the book is strangely more about the past than the present. And the story in bo...more A massive exploration into eugenics, Boxer, Beetle is ambitious. The two main characters are self-loathing bastards, though their self-destruction manifests itself in different ways. It's a man's world, so the only woman who comes close to being a main character is somehow more well-adjusted (perhaps because she is straight and the men are not straight.) The narrator doesn't seem to be a main character to me, because the book is strangely more about the past than the present. And the story in both the past and the present takes many twists and turns.

What Beauman does well is the development of the neurotic male characters (Erskine and Broom) in the book. Their lives, their personal and social constraints, their worries, and their ambitions make them whole. What Beauman does too much of, for me, is the political blabber about the anti-Semitic, eugenics-centered arguments between politicians and intellectuals that go on and on and on for pages, where, yes, one would need to look up many events that happen or are referred to make sense of most of it. That's all fine; who doesn't like to work a little to learn some good history? (Uhm, some people don't, so this book is not recommended for those...) But somehow it was too much, too long, and at some point I found myself skimming through the anti-Semitic bullshit to get to the action or the personal developments. All of it reminded me of Rushdie's books where references to current affairs and historical events are a staple of every paragraph, but Beauman's prose does not flow as well or is not as captivating. There is also the added massive uncomfortable feeling of reading horrendously racist things being said that if you grew up in the West and are not a skinhead, you might find yourself cringing a lot. Of course, most of it is also hilarious. But not at all. But yes. But no. And it goes...

As for the beetles... As someone who designs biological experiments to test hypotheses on a daily basis, I am not sure what the question is that is being asked by the experiments with the beetles in the book. That selective breeding can improve select traits? But that's not what Erskine's genius (eugenics) idea, that's only what agriculture and farming has been doing for centuries. Can we breed better stuff by combining those that have select good traits? Sure, but nowhere in the book do we learn that Erskine has done such experiments. What seems to happen int he book is that there are some beetles and by feeding them different stuff and/or over time, Erskine allows them to become super beetles... Uhm, OK... (Perhaps all this is to ridicule the "science" of eugenics?)

In the end, I am glad I read this book and learned some stuff about fascism in Europe (Blackshirts, Battle of Cable Street, etc.) I am not sure if I would recommend to to anyone, other than those who really enjoy intellectual, historical, and rather uncomfortable subject matters.

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Aug 04, 2012 Christy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ned Beauman’s addition to this year’s Man-Booker Longlist for The Teleportation Accident reminded me of my long intention to read his first book, Boxer Beetle, written at the disgustingly unripe age of 24. I have had my suspicions that Beauman is – with this tremendous head-start – going to go very far indeed, perhaps as another Amis. But those Beauman shows the same precocity, his realization is rather different.

Boxer Beetle is at heart a ripping piece of genre fiction – a mixture of mystery an...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Mariano Hortal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-contemporary, genre-science-fiction, north-american-literature

Publicado en http://lecturaylocura.com/boxer-beetle/

Una de las grandes ventajas de la globalización actual es el acceso casi en tiempo real a un montón de documentación por todas partes; no solo a través de Internet, sino a través de tiendas y otros medios con los que se puede conseguir casi de todo. Hace años era impensable conseguir en España, por poner un ejemplo, todas las temporadas del Doctor Who (aunque sean en inglés), a menos que te fueras a Inglaterra a comprarlas y te las trajeras, ta...more Publicado en http://lecturaylocura.com/boxer-beetle/

Una de las grandes ventajas de la globalización actual es el acceso casi en tiempo real a un montón de documentación por todas partes; no solo a través de Internet, sino a través de tiendas y otros medios con los que se puede conseguir casi de todo. Hace años era impensable conseguir en España, por poner un ejemplo, todas las temporadas del Doctor Who (aunque sean en inglés), a menos que te fueras a Inglaterra a comprarlas y te las trajeras, tarea harto dificultosa por la cantidad de Dvds que tendrías que poner en varias maletas.
Hoy, si el inglés no es un impedimento, puedes acceder a mucha cultura; y como seas inquieto, estás perdido; porque intentarás conseguir una cosa tras otra, las posibilidades son infinitas. En mi caso personal, tengo que reconocer que estoy utilizando estas opciones y lo voy a empezar a utilizar igualmente en el blog; ¿y cómo será eso? Ya desde hace tiempo alterno lecturas en nuestra lengua con la de la pérfida Albión e iré poniendo aquellas que valgan la pena; algunas estarán disponibles en España en diversas traducciones pero otras, posiblemente, solo se puedan leer en la lengua original porque difícilmente alguna editorial las traerá por aquí. La lectura que escojo para inaugurar este espacio de lecturas es “Boxer Beetle” del jovencísimo (27 años) Ned Beauman, escritor inglés que ejerce de crítico literario y que debutó con esta novela en el 2010.
El comienzo de dicha novela no puede más que arrancarnos una sonrisa:
“In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels’ forty-third birthday party. I like to think that even in the busy autumn of 1940, Hitler might have found time to organise a surprise party for his close friend.”
Estos pensamientos, relacionados con una fiesta de cumpleaños de Hitler a Goebbels, están en la cabeza de nuestro oloroso protagonista Kevin, que posee una enfermedad que le hace apestar a pescado, de ahí su sobrenombre Fishy y que se dedica a buscar y coleccionar cualquier tipo de accesorio o recordatorio relacionado con los Nazis; la trama se desencadenará cuando encuentre una carta de agradecimiento a un tal Doctor Erskine por parte del mismísimo Hitler:
“Dear Doctor Erskine,
I have received gifts from popes, tycoons, and heads of state, but none have ever been so singular or unexpected as your king tribute. It is a reminder that the conquests of the scientists are every bit as important to our future as the conquests of the soldier. I hope you will keep me informed of the progress of your work – perhaps one day the Third Reich will have a position for you. How is your German?
Fond regards
Adolf Hitler.”
Esto desembocará en dos líneas temporales, por un lado la de Fishy intentando encontrar qué es lo que hizo tan feliz a Hitler que fuera tan singular e inesperado comparado con regalos de magnates y papas; por el otro, una línea ubicada en 1935-1936, donde el protagonista será el boxeador Seth Roach Sinner; sus genes y la manipulación genética que Erskine, como típico “mad doctor” intentará realizar en el cuerpo de Sinner, incluso después de su muerte:
“I want to buy your body as one might buy a dog or an armchair. I won’t restrict your freedom in any meaningful way, but until your death you’ll submit to whatever experiments and observations I wish to perform in the service of my theories. And after that, I will have custody of your remains.”
Las sorpresas se irán sucediendo en ambos tiempos para confluir en una solución final, pero todo en la novela es retador: la creación de una nueva lengua al estilo del Esperanto, un proto Esperanto de hecho; la evolución genética de un escarabajo (beetle) con genes humanos dando lugar a ese encantador espécimen que es el Anopthtalmus hitleri; la fusión de géneros se va sucediendo según va avanzando irremisiblemente la trama… hasta un sorprendente y emocionante final.
El momento en que la hermana de Philip Erskine comenta lo siguiente supone, quizá, en ese instante, la definición del tipo de novela que Beauman quiere crear, lo que quiere transmitir:
“It sounds wrong! That’s exactly it – in a manner of speaking. You see, everyone says atonality is a perversion. Serial music is supposed to be foreign and sinister and subversive. All those fools think the tonal system is God’s law, so if you cast it aside you must be mad or bad. And they’re right that the tones pull towards triads and triads pull towards tonality, but the whole point of life is to resist whatever pulls on your –you must know that even better than I do.” “Schoenberg says, “What distinguishes dissonances from consonances is not a greater or lesser degree of beauty, but a greater or less degree of comprehensibility.” But he’s wrong. Beethoven is not easier to understand that Berg. It’s not about beauty or comprehensibility. It’s about life. Dissonance is the sound of life in the twentieth century.”
Quizá lo que sucede es que estamos demasiado acostumbrados a las consonancias de tiempos pasados, pero parafraseando al escritor “la disonancia es el sonido de la vida en el siglo veinte”, y ya puestos, en el siglo veintiuno.
Este relato disonante refleja más de nosotros mismos y de nuestro tiempo que lo que podemos pensar inicialmente, es un reto, quizá las narraciones contemporáneas tienen que ir por ahí; podríamos llamarlo postmodernismo, pero más bien tendería a inclinarme por los “Cultural Studies”, “interracialidad” de géneros, referencias pop, falta de linealidad temporal, personajes aparentemente enervantes, extraños…. Vaya unión explosiva de elementos para una novela diferente, original, divertida y, sobre todo, innovadora.
Para los que no puedan leerlo en inglés tenemos la versión española traducida aquí por “Escarabajo Hitler” y publicada por la editorial Funambulista . Los que se atrevan, sí, mejor en inglés, vaya que sí. Una buena ocasión de leer algo distinto.(less)

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Jul 26, 2012 !Tæmbuŝu marked it as to-read

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, united-kingdom

Reviewed by The Guardian (14 Aug 2010), The Independent (20 Oct 2010), The Independent (29 Aug 2010), The Telegraph(18 Aug 2010), The Telegraph(5 Sep 2010)

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Nov 02, 2012 Lorraine Sears rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a strange tale this was. The more I try to put my finger on what it was about, the more I am left floundering. There’s no denying it was a thoroughly engaging story, with a glut of well defined and interesting characters.

The story is told by a young man with an interest in Nazi memorabilia and as we follow him on his imposed adventure we're also taken back and forth between present day and the late eighteen hundreds, picking out connections that link the Erskine family of well-to-do fascist...more

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Dec 11, 2011 Charlie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: amazon-vine-reviews

The synopsis of this story about sums it up and to add any more detail would surely ruin it for the reader. Imaginative and original, the Boxer Beetle is a collage of literary style, but not in a rip-off sort of way, but rather, cleverly interrogating classic greats paying homage to the boundary breakers who came before this generation. A pace-setting, genre-spanning tale that breeds Salinger, Kafka and Miller into a pretty specimen that can hold its own weight in any class or fight. Something a...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Renee rated it 3 of 5 stars

The premise of this book was better than the execution. You read the back and think, "What! How crazy and interesting!" But, unfortunately the key emotional entanglement between Philip and Sinner is framed around this rather paltry "murder mystery" that Fishy has to investigate; it was probably added to provide a character that we could consider likeable, which is ridiculous since we see so little of Fishy that we can't really care about him and the two character we do see a lot about are rather...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Boyd rated it 3 of 5 stars

Better in concept than in actuality. Beauman writes wittily and well, and the mash-up of ideas--eugenics and sundry other pathologies physical, intellectual, and political; entomology, urban planning, language, boxing--is piquant, but as a whole the thing doesn't hold up. It reminds me a bit of Tom McCarthy's recent novel C: it's so busy with its own ideas that it forgets about structure and character. (And speaking of characters, the ones here run the gamut from unattractive to repellent.) are...more

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