The Wilt Inheritance
by Tom Sharpe (Random House, 2010); audiobook read by Michael Tudor Barnes (Isis, 2011)
Erstwhile satirist Sharpe seems here merely to have given up on the world. ‘Wilt’ is notionally a comedy of (ill)manners, but the line-by-line laughs are lacking and the plot, for all its spiteful bluster, visits no comeuppance upon its singularly dislikeable cast.
Blott on the Landscape
by Tom Sharpe (Secker & Warburg, 1975); audiobook read by David Suchet (AudioGO, 2011)
Sharpe weaves plot strands like Wodehouse and is similarly dexterous in his use of prose. He is coarse, though, and often vulgar, his characters toilet plungered en masse from the unseemly depths of human nature. Nonetheless, ‘Blott’ executes a dizzying comedic spiral.