The Hippopotamus

Did I have to take a photo of this book in front of all the liquor in the house? Yes.

The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry

Blurb:

Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too.
Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments and disgusted with a world that undervalues him, Ted seeks a few months repose and free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan.
But strange things have been going on at Swafford. Miracles, Healings, Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted...

Review:

A deranged university in Texas had paid me for the rights to all my papers.
"Papers?" I had asked when approached by their Professor of Modern Poetry. "What do you mean papers?"
"Hell, you know … notebooks, drafts, correspondence … papers."
What kind of self-conscious and insufferably twee belle-lettriste ponce keeps notebooks? I asked myself. Utterly absurd, but the money was good, so I sat down one weekend and forged dozens of likely-looking rough drafts of my better-known poems. It was the greatest lark alive, scrawling indecipherable Greek in the margin, writing 'but Skelton????', 'mild und leise wie er lächelt', 'see Reitlinger's Economics of Taste Vol. II, page 136' and 'No, no, no, no, no, no! Close the field, close the field!!!!' in different-coloured inks across the pages.

This reading experience was quite a ride. When I read the beginning of the book I was convinced I would end up hating the whole thing because, frankly, the protagonists is such an asshole in this very self-assured way where he states everything with so much confidence as if it would actually do me any good to hear about the quality of every single woman's breasts. But then the story went on and and visited some really weird places and I was confused but also really wanted to know where it was going. And then the ending really surprised me not only because it was actually really great but also because it was such a simple solution that I didn't even see it coming (maybe due to the bad image I had created for myself of the book in the beginning? who knows).

If you don't mind crude topics, crude protagonists, protagonists that are assholes, and general weirdness (I actually talked to a fellow student of mine about the book and I tried to outline the plot and she had this perfectly bewildered expression on her face almost the entire time, you've been warned) I would actually really recommend you give it a shot. I'd actually suggest you not read up on anything and go into this one blind because, boy, it really is quite an interesting experience and you shouldn't miss it if you're up to it. 

That being said, if you are considering reading this book and everything I've said so far makes you slightly suspicious I do want to give you a fair warning. (And a second warning: this is definitely spoiler-territory) My warning is the following: there are some quite terrible sexual acts depicted in this. (Third warning, I'm going to full-on spoil some things from the book) Like, someone has sex with a horse, someone tries to receive a blow-job against the girl's will, someone has sex with his cousin, etc. Behind all of these acts there is either an awful power structure or an awful power structure + other problematic factors. 

Yet, the ending makes all that worth it, somehow? It's not just the resolution but also the resulting character development that kind of flips the whole story on its head and gives it all a new, revised perspective. And I really appreciated that.

Rating:

I ended up being really surprised by how good this book turned out to be. I really can't stress this enough. The beginning sounded like I was bound to end up hating this but then ... this happened. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Details:

Name: The Hippopotamus

Deutscher Titel: Das Nilpferd

Author: Stephen Fry

Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd

Pages: 356

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