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Philip Hensher

Philip Hensher Biography

Novelist

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“The thing I truly object to,” Kitty said, “and I know this sounds trivial and I don’t care if it sounds a bit snobbish, but I don’t care about these awful people and I do care about this. It’s that the whole world now thinks about Hanmouth as being this sort of awful council estate and nothing else, and Hanmouth people like this awful Heidi and Micky people. Absolutely everything you read in the papers is about how they live in Hanmouth and, frankly, they don’t. They live on the Ruskin estate where I’ve never been and I hope never to go anywhere near.”

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Book:King of the Badgers
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“Fiction allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people. People are certainly better at all sorts of things if they can hold a novel in their heads. It is quite a skill, but if you can't do it then you're missing out on something in life. I think you can tell, when you meet someone, whether they read novels or not. There is some little hollowness if they don't.”

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Author:Philip Hensher
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“The Humbling is not vintage Roth, despite its compelling premise. The bizarre series of episodes -- mostly sexual encounters with women -- which make up this short novel don't play to Roth's strengths. (...) The Humbling disappoints because it avoids these universal implications, and veers off into a baroque world of the unique and fantastic, never quite deigning to make its world concrete or to give its characters the honour of an independent will.”

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Author:Philip Hensher
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