Class

This novel is uncharacteristically dark and cynical for it's time. It's aged so well that I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't snatched it up yet. The story starts off with an air of humor and gets progressively darker and more disturbing as it progresses, especially in his Memoirs.

The character of Gil-Martin is especially well written and captivating. The author clearly foreshadows that he is the devil from the beginning, (being called a prince, not praying, making allusions to having many servants and trying to increase his dominion etc.)the reader sees how cleverly he manipulates the pathological narrator into doing very evil things. There shouldn't be any dispute at all about whether Gil-Martin is real or a part of Robert's imagination. Many other character's see him WITH Robert and he clearly uses his supernatural powers to frame innocent people.

The pathologically self-righteous and deluded narration of Robert is also a great part of the novel and although not as easy a read as the editor's perspective, the memoirs are the real meat of the story.

I was tempted to give the novel 4 stars because the Confession part drags on WAY too long. It really hurts the novel that near the end of the memoirs there's such long uneventful spans. BUT since I think it's a novel more people should be reading and should know about I will give it 5 stars to give it a boost. This story is truly original and fascinating and deserves a lot more recognition.

Hogg's book was one of many 'Gothic' doppelganger novels produced at the time, as editor Cuddon makes clear in his introduction. What sets 'Sinner' apart is the fierce, unforgiving, saturnine, phlegmatic, terse, Biblical, paganistic, ugly beauty of the vocabulary and phraseology (Hogg was a shepherd and a poet), suited to a narrative lashed with hate, murder, bigotry and terror, whose sheer violence connects it with another shocking Gothic one-off, Lautreamont's 'Maldoror'; the way the 'double' theme of the novel is embedded not just in the plot, but in the rich formal patterning, from character groupings to the religiously and politically divided Scotland of its setting; and the wide literary adventurousness as a whole which, in its proliferation of stories, framing devices, and self-reflexivity create a labyrinthine, elusive, very modern text.

" 'Brilliant timing,' she said. 'Tea's just made.'

"But J.J. walked straight past the pot, which steamed on the range in the kitchen, and the plates of fresh scones on the table. Upstairs in his room, his schoolbag lay open on his bed, leaking overdue homework. He glanced at the clock. If he got up half an hour early the next morning he could get a bit of it done.

"He spilled the bag and its contents onto the floor, and as he set the alarm he wondered, as he wondered every day, where on earth all the time went."

--from THE NEW POLICEMAN

"Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today

And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking

And racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older

And shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time..."

--Pink Floyd, "Time"

Shortly after I finished reading aloud THE NEW POLICEMAN to Shari, we tried to recall the last entire, new book that I had read aloud to her.

Sure, there are plenty of nights when Shari falls asleep to my reading her a taste from the beginning of some newly-arrived advance copy. Many of these books she'll read to herself, before or after I've gotten my own turn to do so. But to find and coordinate the chunks of time necessary to share an entire 400-page book, given each of our incredibly busy schedules apart and together...Well, it has been a long time. And the years go by so fast with all we try to fit into each day.

"It wasn't just the Liddys -- or the Liddy--Byrnes, as some people called them -- who were finding that there wasn't enough time. Everyone was having the same problem. It was understandable, perhaps, in those households where both parents were out at work all day and had to cram all their home and family life into a few short hours. But it wasn't just the parents who complained of the shortage of time. Even children, it seemed, couldn't get enough of it. The old people said it was because they had too many things to do, and perhaps it was true that there were too many opportunities open to them. Apart from the ubiquitous televisions and computers there was, even in a small place like Kinvara, a plethora of afterschool activities open to them, from karate to basketball to drama and back again. Even so, there ought to have been time for mooching along the country lanes, for picking blueberries, for lounging in summer meadows and watching the clouds go by, for climbing trees and making dens. There should have been time for reading books and watching raindrops run down windows, for finding patterns in the damp stains on the ceiling and for dreaming wild daydreams. There wasn't. Apart from the inevitable few who regarded it as their solemn duty, children could scarcely even find time for making mischief. Everybody in the village, in the county -- in the whole country, it seemed -- was chronically short of time

. " 'It never used to be like this,' the old people said.

" 'It wasn't this way when we were young,' said the middle-aged.

" 'Is this really what life's all about?' said the young, on those rare occasions when they had a moment to think about it.

"For a while it was all anyone talked about, once the weather was out of the way. Then they didn't talk about it anymore. What was the point? And besides, where was the time to talk about time? People didn't call to one another's houses anymore; not to sit and chat over a cup of tea, anyway. Everyone was always on their way somewhere, or up to their eyes in something, or racing around trying to find someone, or more often, merely trying to catch up with themselves."

So it was on the Liddy farm where J.J.'s mother, Helen, is approaching another birthday, even though the last one seems as if it was only a month ago. When asked what she would like for her birthday, Helen wishes for some " 'ordinary, run-of-the-mill time. A few more hours in every day.' " And it will be J.J. who, after learning some of the details of their unusual family history, determines that he is going to somehow make his mother's wish come true.

Set in Ireland, each chapter is accompanied by the sheet music for a traditional Irish reel or jig. (I spent some time online, sampling a number of the pieces.) Already the winner of the 2005 Guardian children's fiction prize as well as the 2005 Whitbread children's book of the year, THE NEW POLICEMAN is a fanciful, mysterious, magical, chock-full-of-music tale about where the time is disappearing to so fast.

(And if all that isn't enough, J.J.'s adventures have also caused THE NEW POLICEMAN to become my all-time favorite "boy and his dog" book.)

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified sinner is the story of the illigitamate son of a Scottish laird who is convinced by the devil to act on his own spite and rage and commit murder -- but Hogg adds a clever twist (I don't want to spoil anything by saying what it is) that leaves the reader wondering...
One of the great things about this book is that its serious subject matter is balanced by a dose of humor -- I was surprised to find myself giggling through the first fifty pages which tell of the laird's marriage to a reluctantly religious woman.
This is a must-read for anyone interested in nineteenth-century fantasy, but its detailing of the making of a fanatic is still hauntingly relevent today...

This book was published in 1824 and harks back to the novels of the 18th Century (no prudery, but primitive sociopolitical views), without any major trappings of incipient Victorianism. It reads surprisingly well in modern English, but that is partly because this is quintessentially a 'Scotch' book -- a commentator says no Englishman could possibly have written this novel.

The novel is not a mystery, but it IS a murder story, and is just as upsetting as PSYCHO or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It goes right into the depths of psychological realism, even though that wasn't systematized back then -- a story of religious fanatacism that you can fit to modern avatars like Jones or Manson. And the underpinning is the horrible travesty of Christianity the Scots grafted onto Calvinist Protestantism that caused so much woe back in the days of Cavaliers vs. Covenanters -- i.e., that certain people are predestined by God to be saved (because He set up everything in advance, before time even began), so it doesn't really matter WHAT they do in life, which led to a kind of Caledonian Khomeini-ism.
There are the usual bits of Scottish dialog rendered in pseudo-phonetics, but not as egregious as in other novels of the sort. In spite of being set in the early 1700s, it generally comes across as a description of a Scotland that hasn't changed much in modern times, with parallels to football hooligans and drunks and debauchees, plus an innate puritanism and political extremism -- the more things change, the more they say the same.

Structure of the plot is clever: a 90-page summary by the "Editor" based supposedly on publicly available details, that lays out the bare bones of the story in a very journalistic (I mean news-in-depth) manner, followed by the revealed Memoirs, where of course the narrator is naive enough to display all of his faults as supposed virtues -- although he finally catches on at the end. Hoary plot device, but it works very well. This presages JEKYLL AND HYDE, which, knowing now of this book, I can see was influenced by it (well, Stevenson was a Scot too, and would have known Hogg, whereas the rest of the Eng-Lit world only paid attention to Sir Walter and Burns in his whimsical vein in those days). Basically, it is a story of a man who murders his older brother to inherit his lairdship and lands, although he is of a type who would never admit to such a base motive. He goes on to do even more horrible deeds (maybe!). The protagonist is a snotty, ugly little twerp, even as he portrays himself and as he is portrayed by others. This paradoxically adds a bit of fun to this dour book -- the author was one of the radical-poet circle of his times, so he could indulge in an unusual level of cynicism for the period. There is a lot of irony and satire in this, conveyed in a wry way that is almost uniquely Scottish (closest to it is Yiddish).

The familial situation is rather odd, consisting of an old-fashioned huntin' drinkin' laird, his mistress/housekeeper, his older Tom Jones-ish son, the Blifil-ish Sinner, the laird's pious and prudish wife (whom he rapes on their wedding night rather than kneeling down for some wholesome prayer), and her spiritual adviser Wringhim, who 'adopts' the younger son in time (or is perhaps his father, but not likely, this being a novel of people looking like their role models, like dogs are supposed to resemble their masters). Wringhim, while not a 'sinner', is a perfect ass, and is responsible for educating his snot-nosed ward into his perception of personal infalibility.
After all this, it turns out to be a Faustian story, because the Devil went on vacation from his other duties just to have fun playing with this particular victim. After all, how could he resist leading to depraved evils a person who believed through his Justified Religion that he was predestined by God to be one of the elect in Heaven no matter what he did on Earth? Satan, in this story, is a marvelous invention in that he takes on the features and character of whatever/whomever he is being seen by at the time -- for the most part, your own image as you perceive yourself to be, or if you're thinking of Jesus, he'll look like Jesus, or of Ringo Starr like Ringo Starr, etc. (At one point, the protagonist thinks, "I had no doubt now that he was Peter of Russia.") Naturally, Satan leads on the Justified Sinner to commit murders and despicable acts that the 'hero' thinks he can't be damned for since he's been predestined for heaven. (An alternative reading is, of course, that Colwan is paranoid/schizo, and this devil is his own delusion.)
Edinburgh setting: there is a fine and scary scene that takes place on Arthur's Seat, which you will appreciate all the more if you know that city. The end of the story is a phantasmagoria, magical events and all. Here, the devil in the new Laird Colwan's guise commits seductions, frauds, and murders of a despicable nature (including matricide: "she had by this time rendered herself exceedingly obnoxious to me"), driving our 'poor hero' into a state of total schizophrenia (he believes or doesn't that he really did these things, and maybe he did). Dirty trick follows dirty trick, to excess -- and maybe that isn't fair, considering how the book went before. For the devil to implement rather than instigate is of dubious orthodoxy, yet there is some doubt as to what really happened. When Colwan finally tells his friend to 'begone', he replies: "Our beings are amalgamated, as it were, and consociated in one, and never shall I depart from this country until I can carry you in triumph with me." (Guess that finally makes the situation clear.) "If this that you tell me be true," said I, "then it is as true that I have two souls, which take possession of my bodily frame by turns, the one being all unconscious of what the other performs; for as sure as I have at this moment a spirit within me, fashioned and destined to eternal felicity, as sure am I utterly ignorant of the crimes you now lay to my charge."
Colwan's adventures, when he goes on the lam, pursued by the obligatory mob (as in the movie versions of the contemporary novel FRANKENSTEIN), will be omitted here -- discover for yourself! (Well, he does get all tangled up in a miller's loom, and ends up in Edinburgh as a typesetter's apprentice -- hence 'justification' for the existence of the Memoirs.)
This is a very fine book, and I'll leave off now (as it is, this summary ended up being a lot longer than I intended).

I "accidentally" found this book while backpacking through Scotland and will freely admit that I bought it merely based on the book's title.
Of the many books I read during my time in Britain, this was by far my favorite, and I would recommend it to anyone either fascinated in with the occult or traveling in that region; this book, humorous in spots, also explores the depths of dementia and should exist in rank with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky etc.
Though this book is now considered a classic, at the time of its publication it was ill-received by the general public. Because of its unflattering depiction of pre-destination and perhaps Christian fundamentalism in general, many readers thought the work to be a side-affect of alcoholismon the part of the author. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Published in 1824, this was a hundred years ahead of its time, and it's just now coming to be appreciated. Is it a gothic novel? A meta-novel? A precursor of magic realism? A warning against religious fanaticism? The book hinges on the extreme Calivinist concept of antinomianism: if you're predestined to be saved, you'll end up in heaven no matter what outrageous sins and crimes you commit. This obviously raises interesting moral dilemmas. Hogg was a contemporary and friend of Sir Walter Scott, but while Scott's prose sometimes puts modern readers to sleep, Hogg is more likely to keep you awake at night!

I've just finished reading Kate Thompson's `The New Policeman' and it is wonderful. Wonder -full. I'm Irish born and bred and raised on the old stories, and here, in the Ireland of 2005, the `draíocht' (magic) is alive and well in this book.

The characters and language are keenly observed -- as we say `dead on'. I know these people and these voices. And anyone who has spent any time in Ireland will recognize these places too -- particularly the places where one can't help but feel that there's another place right behind what you are seeing.

I'm totally at a loss to understand the review below (HoraceHorse). Its seems to posit that since Kate Thompson is `guilty' of being English (which we don't consider to be a crime in Ireland), this book must somehow be a lame rip-off. And the reviewer lives in ... Texas? Actually, from his opening words he's obviously axe-grinding rather than reviewing. And that's unfair -- agus míbhéasach.

This is an intelligent, soulful book. It deserves the kudos it has gotten and I will recommend it to all -- as I do to you.

In the novel The New Policeman, time doesn't seem to be on anyone's side. All the Irish villagers of Kinvara feel like they never have enough of it. For teenager JJ Liddy, time seems to be passing too quickly, with no time to practice his Irish music, no time to understand his family's mysterious history, no time to hang out with his friends to go clubbing. In fact, JJ's mom's only request for her birthday is to have more time. In search of it, JJ finds himself in the magical and musical world of Tír na n'Óg, the land of eternal youth, that he thought only existed in fictional storybooks. Here, there has never been any time...until recently. Somehow, a leak has been created between these parallel worlds...a leak which brings time to Tír na n'Óg, and will eventually bring death, to the fairy world. In turn this leak is taking away the hours of the "noddy" (human) world. If JJ can help the fairies find the leak, then he can bring time back to his mother, and even solve a few family mysteries as well. However, unbeknownst to JJ, as time is passing at a snail's pace in Tír na n'Óg, it is flying by in JJ's village, and his disappearance is causing great concern back home.

Author Kate Thompson has carefully crafted a story that fuses together Irish history, folklore, music, and mystery. The short chapters that end with traditional Irish musical score section create an interesting break in the tale. Although there is a glossary included that contains of many of the Irish terms used in the novel, it would benefit students to have background knowledge of such words along with some Irish musical information to create initial curiosity in a story that could seem overwhelming without such knowledge. It would even be fun to begin the book Reader's Theatre style in order to generate interest. Cross curricular connections with the music teacher would enhance the text even more. Students usually not interested in fantasy may at first be bothered with the introduction of the fairy world, but wondering how JJ will find the leak and whether he will make it back to his home before too much time passes will move readers willingly through this book.

This very amusing and thorough look at the British class system (up to the late 70s when it was written) is so accurate it can make you laugh one minute and cringe the next. To a large extent, much of it still applies today but in some areas things have lightened up a little I think (hope!). Jilly Cooper has a wicked sense of humour and a very easy style which made this book a very enjoyable read. Bravo! Pip, pip.

AN AMAZING BOOK. How can this book be over looked so long? Don't let it continue! Read this book from 1824 and be blown away. THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER is classified as Scottish Romanticism...what it is is a dark tale of a serial killer, dark and modern in its creepiness. I think you will greatly enjoy the book.

Hogg writes a compelling story about a religious fanatic. Personally I'm a devout Christian and this novel scared me--in a very good way. Fanaticism can lead us away from God and we can become exactly what we thought we were fighting against.
Wonderful story that will impact your life.

A delightful book. Set in Ireland, and steeped in folk-lore and love of Irish music. But a simple story that top primary children upwards would love. Time appears to be running out - there is never enough of it. JJ, the main character, finds a way through a soutterrain into the land of Tir Na Nog. There, the fairies have noticed that time is starting to pass (it shouldn't) and this may lead to the destruction of their world. But they are so laid back they don't get round to doing anything. It takes JJ, who comes from a family with a history, to sort out both their world and his. This book has won lots of prizes and is highly recommended.

The English class system is so complex and involved that all of us have different perspectives. I agree with Jilly Cooper about 90%: which doesn't mean that either of us have "got it right", if indeed such a thing is possible.
The author writes with humour and an observant eye. She goes much further than Nancy Mitford's U and non-U. The book is inevitably a bit dated, but the underlying pattern is still there: unfortunately.

1824, Scottish, a cross between Faust and The Invisible Man, critiquing Calvinism, AND it's funny! What more can you ask? (As a friend of mine said, with a description like that, the book has to be anticlimax; but he's wrong.)

It's a ridiculous caricature of Calvinism. This man was obviously prejudiced by some ill-advised treatment or something like that. Readers should look into the real teachings that are criticized here rather than taking someone else's word for it.

I remember liking this (I actually just read it) but now I don't remember much about it. Ireland and music and the faerie world but now... yeah.. it's gone... and I just read it two weeks ago. I guess that is not a very good sign.