View source for Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

{{infobox1
|title=Boxer, Beetle
|author=Ned Beauman
|reviewer=Robert James
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Bizarre tale of a modern day collector of Nazi artifacts searching for something and a scientist interested in eugenics studying a boxer in 1930’s London. The modern day parts work really well, but much of the 1930’s story doesn’t.
|rating=3
|buy=No
|borrow=Maybe
|pages=256
|publisher=Sceptre
|date=August 2010
|isbn=978-0340998397 
|cover=0340998415
|aznuk=0340998415
|aznus=0340998393
}}

According to the blurb for Boxer, Beetle, ‘’This is
a novel for people with breeding… It is clever. It is distinctive. It
is entertaining. We hope you are too.’’ I like about half of it, so
does that mean I’m on the way to being those things?

That disappointment with half of the book is all the more heartfelt
because there are some excellent parts to it. It hooked me in straight
away with an opening chapter in which we’re introduced to narrator
Fishy, a collector of Nazi memorabilia and sufferer from a rare
disease which makes him smell horrendously bad. Just a few pages in,
Fishy goes to check on a private investigator working for his boss and
finds both the investigator’s corpse and a bizarre letter written by
Adolf Hitler himself.

We’re then transported back to 1934 London, when we meet a boxer
called Seth ‘Sinner’ Roach, who Fishy’s boss had mentioned, and a
scientist Philip Erskine. Erskine has spent many years studying
beetles and is now aiming to apply his knowledge to humans, starting
with Roach, who’s not so keen. The pair of characters are both faintly
repulsive, as are many of the surrounding cast in this part of the
story, and unfortunately it’s the 1930’s which dominates rather than
the current day scenario.

The main part of the novel is taken up with Erskine trying to breed
his beetles and to examine Sinner, while we occasionally jump back to
the present for tantalisingly short chapters as Fishy has realised
that he’s in a dangerous situation with some scary people coming after
him. Unused to even leaving his house much because of his condition,
he’s forced to come up with increasingly bizarre ways to keep himself
in one piece. Fishy is a superb character – certainly not likeable,
but at least sympathetic, and I was practically groaning every time
the action moved back from him to Roach and Erskine in the 1930’s. We
also get a bizarre part about Erskine’s grandfather, who was aiming to
promote his own world language similar to Esperanto, which doesn’t
seem to add anything of interest to the novel.

It’s certainly not a complete failure as a book – as mentioned above,
the opening chapter is superb, and the closing chapter, when the two
stories are finally brought properly together, is excellent, a bizarre
but entertaining end to Fishy’s quest. Unfortunately, too much of
what’s in between is lethargic and uninteresting for me to really
recommend this one. I enjoyed the few modern parts of it so much that
I’m definitely interested in reading more by Ned Beauman, however.
I’ve just looked him up on the internet and found out he’s only 24, so
hopefully there’ll be much more to come from him.

Further Reading: Having spent longer looking for a suitable comparison
than I did writing this review, I’m really struggling here. As bizarre
a comparison as it seems, fans of the humour in the modern bits might
enjoy [[Thank You, Jeeves by P G Wodehouse]] though.

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