Publisher's Weekly Review
English polymath Fry (actor, playwright, newspaper columnist, fledgling novelist) is one of the funniest people writing on either side of the Atlantic. His debut novel, The Liar, published here two years ago by Soho, was brilliantly comic but a bit disorganized. Now, apart from a tendency to shift perspectives rather unconvincingly (which criticism he gleefully anticipates in his hilariously crotchety foreword), he has matters firmly in hand. The hippo of his title is going-to-seed poet Ted Wallace, an aging lecher who drinks too much and is at odds, in his massively cantankerous way, with most of modern life. His ruminations, including achingly funny riffs on subjects as varied as how much more difficult sex is for men than for women, and why it's easier to be a composer or artist than a poet, are like a combination of Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis but, because Fry is such a dazzling mimic and has a splendid ear for contemporary jargon, funnier than either. His plot is decidedly weird: Ted's goddaughter Jane, apparently cured of cancer by the gifts of a teenage son of a rich tycoon, sends Ted off to the tycoon's family seat in Norfolk to find out how the kid does it. In the end, of course, Ted does so, acting as a rather improbable detective, but only after a series of imaginative set pieces, including a scene with a horse that has to be read to be believed. Fry's wicked queenie patter in the persona of ``Mother'' Oliver is alone worth the price of the book. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Once again, from the author of The Liar (1993), plenty of penetration and unabashed chauvinism. It's a bad sign when a story begins with a warning from the narrator about its 94,536 words: ``I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn.'' Fry seems as self-satisfied as his main character. Ted, a bitter old poet, is having a drink at a local pub and checking out the women (``all of whom I wanted to take upstairs and spear more or less fiercely''), when he runs into one of his two godchildren. Jane, a lovely 25-year-old with whom he lost contact when he and her mother had a falling out years ago, has leukemia and only three months to live. But Jane believes she's cured--cured, in fact, by Ted's other godchild, a 15-year-old named David. Jane offers Ted one million dollars to spend time at Swafford Hall, the home of David's family, ostensibly to write a biography of David's father, Michael, but really to discover the healer's secret and share it with the world. Ted, always the skeptic, takes the offer on a lark (and because he needs the money). He finds David to be an extremely sensitive and proud boy who claims that his great-grandfather had curative powers. This, and the coincidental placement of his hand on his little brother's chest just as he came out of a moment of respiratory distress, convinces David that he can remedy everything from cancer to homeliness. The claim also provides the perfect outlet for David's sexual urges when he decides that to truly treat a person he must get inside that person. He deposits his medicative seed in everyone from cousin Jane to angina-suffering friend Oliver and an ill horse. Good satire is thoughtful, but this is too obviously constructed to shock and offend.
Library Journal Review
At the request of his godchild Jane, Ted Wallace visits an old friend's lavish English estate to check up on his other godchild, 15-year-old Davey, who is experimenting with faith healing. Ted, a failed poet, husband, father, and more, joins a strange group of guests at Swafford Hall. The guests drink and converse while Ted seeks to make sense of some rather bizarre goings-on. He solves the puzzle and inherits a fortune. Marvelous dialog enlivens a tale that is fraught with incest, bestiality, and English humor. Obviously, only for special tastes; purchase according to demand. [Author/actor Fry (The Liar, LJ 4/15/93) stars in I.Q., a Para-mount film that will be released early next year.-Ed.]-Robert H. Donahugh, formerly with Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.