Thomas Penman is enduring a very bad adolescence. Growing up in dark, dingy 1950s England, Thomas has problems. These include an unspeakable personal hygiene issue, an eccentric, ailing grandfather who speaks to him in Morse Code, an unrequited passion for the lovely Gwen Hackett, and an incriminatingly large stash of pornography. To cap it all, his warring parents are having him followed by a private investigator. It's hard to believe that things could get much worse for him, but, in fact, they are about to... Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is the author's fascination with every form of bodily excretion. Feces, sputum, semen, earwax--the list is endless. We discover early on that Thomas "from the age of four ... navigated all lavatories and shat himself everywhere else," and the pages that follow detail the boy's obsession with his own fecal matter in terms that are as imaginative as they are repugnant. Having established from the get-go that young Thomas Penman is not going to be an ordinary hero, Bruce Robinson (who wrote the screenplays for the films The Killing Fields and Withnail & I , and also directed the latter) then launches us into his protagonist's life with a vengeance. In short order we discover that Thomas's grandfather, Walter, is riddled with cancer and as obsessed with naked women as his 14-year-old grandson. In addition, Thomas's father, Rob, is involved in an illicit affair and his mother has hired a private detective to prove it. And Thomas himself is madly, truly, deeply in love with the divine Gwen Hackett. Pornography, masturbation, voyeurism--according to Robinson, these are the main preoccupations of the adolescent boy. This book is being compared to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye , and who's to say that Holden Caulfield might not have had similar hobbies had he been written 40 years later? If you can get past the raunchiness of the language and the situations, Thomas makes an unexpectedly sympathetic hero, and his relationship with his half-mad grandfather is oddly tender. The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman is not for the faint of stomach, but for those who like their fiction raw, this one fits the bill. --Alix Wilber An Oscar-winner for the screenplay to The Killing Fields, Robinson debuts in the novel with the hilarious and engaging story of a working-class British teen growing up in the 1950s. Books end will bring explanations for the behavior of all, but at the start a person might well doubt itwhen meeting Thomas Penman, for example, nearly 15 but still preoccupying himself with moving his bowels anywhere but on the toilet and wrapping the results in bags for the discovery and delight of others. This is a boy also (when not constructing bombs) who lies, spies, and eavesdrops obsessivelytraits possibly inherited from his grandfather, who likes to [creep] around in the attic with his penis out. Its a credit to Robinsons Chaucerian skills and enormous human s ympathies that he magically guides his material along the cliff-edge of slapstick and, without losing the least bit of its comic spirit, transforms it into the humane, subtle, and moving. Near the seacoast in Kentwith a passel of rather vile dogs as welll ive Thomas and his sister Bel, their parents Mabs and Rob, and grandparents Walter and Ethel. Rob, tough and built as if of bricks, is a walking fuse of near-rage, while wife Mabs, sleeping on the other side of the house, guards her own secret silence. Dy ing now of cancer, grandfather Walter somehow survived WWI (his tale is unforgettable) but lost his one true lovea void in his life that gives him a special bond to young Thomas, this being the case for reasons that will grow clear at last as the boy fall s in love, searches the past, gets into terrible trouble, thanks in no small part to his weasely friend Maurice and his outrageously stolid and ruinous parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Potts. Love, youth, and satire delivered with the verve and allure of, say, Amisthe real one, that is, not the modernized Martin, but lordly and hilarious Kingsley. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Never before has the painful, knotty journey to maturity been depicted with such gusto, and never has the venerable Bildungsroman received such riotously profane treatment. -- The New York Times Book Review , Patrick McGrath Bruce Robinson has written and directed many films, including the cult classic Withnail and I and the adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary starring Johnny Depp. He has worked with Franco Zeffirelli, Ken Russell, and Francois Truffaut.