![]() ![]() It feels as though behind every piece of junk there is a story and indeed, as Maud begins the seemingly Sisyphean task of cleaning Flood’s house, she comes across two mysterious photographs of his son, Gabriel, taken in the garden of Bridlemere in the 1970s, when he was a child. ![]() ![]() The interior is similarly chaotic, and Kidd renders all its mouldering glories with a sharp eye, from the “dead mouse curled in a teacup” to the dismembered Barbie doll that Maud imagines as “part of some sort of art installation, like the abstract expressionist shit that splatters the wall and the mug tree lodged in the toilet bowl”. Since his wife’s death, he has gradually allowed himself to descend into squalor and Bridlemere, his sprawling, Grade II-listed townhouse, has become overwhelmed with years of accrued jumble.įrom the outside, it is an imposing place of louring grandeur, even if the garden path is lined with “eviscerated mattresses and abandoned car batteries”. And it’s clear from the start that he does. ![]() It’s a tough, thankless job and Maud suspects that it has been given to her because, like Flood, she is Irish and therefore more likely to be able to persuade him that he needs help. Shifting her focus in this second novel from the rural to the urban, Kidd takes us from west Ireland to west London, where careworker Maud Drennan has been tasked with looking after “bedraggled giant” Cathal Flood, the hoarder of the book’s title. I rish author Jess Kidd’s debut Himself was one of the standout titles of 2016, rightly praised for its unique voice and tenor. ![]()
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