Contemporary
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This is a terrific book - such a satisfying development of characters struggling to understand themselves and their motivations as they work through conflicted relationships and the wreckage of past affairs. The false but tempting promises of male self-assertion are explored with care, and the romance plot that drives it is full of twists. The writing is skillful and pleasurable. The whole thing achieves so much more depth than is customary or required in contemporary fiction.
Known a few bastards in your time? Want to find out the secret rules they play by? Then 'THE BASTARD CLUB' is for you. In this deliciously ironic take on gender politics, Andrew Hawkins introduces us to The Institute aka The Bastard Club, a conscience-lobotomising training programme designed to shore up fragile masculine egos, run by the charismatic snake oil salesman, Al Eschler. With its echoes of EST and Al's name very close to another past master of paths that lead nowhere, alarm bells should be ringing for systems analyst, Patrick, a man devastated after his recent break-up with wild child, Cynthia. But neither the spurious initiations and Iron Man weekend retreats at £2k a pop (you need wealth to be an Eschler bastard) nor the misogynistic rules of the club, designed to circumvent falling in love, alert him. It is only when he meets Lillian, whose humanity challenges the objectivising stereotypes the Bastard Club believes in, that he sees the need to subvert the subversive Eschler ideology and break free. Patrick finally declares his love - but it is Lillian who will have the last word... A witty, intelligent debut novel from a writer who looks at the world with an admirably level gaze - and who skewers our expectations on every page. Highly recommended.
Under the leadership of the charismatic Dr Al Eschler, a backlash is being spearheaded against advancing third wave Feminism, in the heart of millennial London. Patrick, a computer systems analyst with his own store of relationship troubles, falls under the influence, and joins the Institute, aka the Bastard Club.
Despite Patrick’s intellectual gifts, even his native scepticism gets worked loose under the glare of Bastard Theory and the mind-warping rigours of the training. His class at the Institute presents an eclectic mix of men’s issues and neuroses, as they battle through strategies, complex and subtle systems of manipulation, Zen arts of chatting up and reporting in.
The American, the ‘Boss’, has the mission and the method. Except Patrick has met and is in pursuit of Lillian, a bright and utterly desirable broadsheet journalist, on whom he must practise and develop his Bastard skills. As his interest in her becomes more compelling, straying even into the ‘heresy’ of love, it becomes increasingly unlikely that this affair, and all that’s riding on it, can work out well…
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