Last week I read a blog post that articulates my response to ‘Armadillo’ better than I can. I’m just so angry and tired. The only possible way to enjoy this book is to overlook the fact that every male character is an arsehole who treats women like shit and every female character (barring one) is a sexy body with no personality who exists to please men. The one female exception is an elderly lady who says practically nothing other than that she’s ready to die, presumably because she is no longer sexually attractive to men and therefore has no reason to exist in the world. Whenever a woman appears in the narrative, not just her general attractiveness but specifically her breasts must be judged. This is by no means every example, just those I found with a quick flick through:

Page 14.

Dymphna’s breasts were momentarily visible as she stooped to stub out her cigarette. Small with pale pointy nipples, he noticed. She really shouldn’t wear such low-

Page 110.

She was an ungainly girl, made more lumpy by pubescence, with dark hair and a sly, pointy face. Her small, sharp breasts caused her huge embarrassment.

Page 151.

A cheerful-looking matronly young woman bounced out of the French windows that gave onto the croquet lawn. She had a big shapeless bosom beneath a baggy bright jumper…

Page 177.

Finally she removed her jacket and scarf and finally he was able to look, guardedly this time, at her breasts. From the pleasing convexities and concavities of her vermilion polo-neck he calculated they were of perfectly average size but flattish, more grapefruit-halves than anything particularly conic.

Even when breasts aren’t the focus, there’s this garbage (page 189):

There was something grubbily attractive about the sullen girl who opened the door to him at DW Management Ltd in Charlotte Street, Lorimer had to admit. Perhaps it was her extreme youth - eighteen or nineteen - perhaps it was the deliberately botched peroxide job on her short hair, or the tightness of the leopard print t-shirt she was wearing, or the three brass rings piercing her left eyebrow, or the fact that she was simultaneously smoking and chewing gum?

The main character, Lorimer Black, could possibly have been interesting if I hadn’t viscerally hated him for his constant cruelty, disdain, and objectification of women. He cheats on his girlfriend and leers at her teenage daughter. He treats every girl and woman he meets as a sexual object. He claims to fall in love with a woman he glimpses in a taxi, then proceeds to stalk her in a profoundly creepy way. He uses work contacts to find her phone number, drops in unannounced at her place of work, lies to her, lurks around outside her home, follows her around, ignores her saying that she's not interested & married, and generally acts like a predator. Choice quote: “You do know, you must be aware, that I’m passionately in love with you. I’ll never take no for an answer.” That is not fucking acceptable! What is worse, and I’m spoiling the ending for your own good, this profoundly wrong and indeed illegal behaviour is rewarded by the object of Lorimer's affections leaving her husband, turning up naked in his bed, and inviting him to run away with her. Given that earlier in the book she does briefly call what he's doing stalking, I can only hope in vain that the final scene is a prelude to her having him arrested. Or perhaps murdered. Every other male character is portrayed as even worse towards women than Lorimer, seemingly to make him seem sympathetic by comparison. It doesn't work, but naturally I hated all of them too. It was exhausting.

This review is intended mainly as a warning. I cannot assess the merits of the plot, setting, and writing of ‘Armadillo’ as I couldn’t get past how profoundly, unremittingly, relentlessly sexist it was. This is some Hemingway-level shit. The idea that male novelists might actually think women are this far from being people absolutely horrifies me. My initial hopes of satirical intent were crushed long before I got through all 370 pages. For fuck’s sake, men, stop it. ( )

Una mañana de invierno, Lorimer Black, apuesto, elegante, discreto, acude a una cita de trabajo y encuentra a un hombre ahorcado. A partir de este presagio ominoso, todas sus certidumbres, tan concienzudamente labradas, comienzan a desvanecerse y el orden calculado por el que se regía se quiebra irremediablemente, desbaratando cualquier previsión. Armadillo es una divertida, disparatada y entretenida novela sobre el absurdo de la vida en una gran metrópoli como Londres, donde acontecimientos sorprendentes pueden volver del revés hasta la existencia más aburrida.

To his colleagues Lorimer Black is a young, good-looking and successful insurance loss adjuster who seems to be in control of his life.But when one morning he goes on a perfectly routine business appointment only to find a hanged man. Not a great way to start any day. Whilst this experience was upsetting when his next assignment, to investigate a fire in a hotel under construction, he finds his life buffeted by forces over which will turn his life upside down.

Nothing is quite as it seems in this book including Lorimer Black's name, he was born Milomre Blocj, the youngest son of a large family of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Lorimer wants to blend in to English society and distance himself from his true identity. He is still close to his family and helps to support them but is trying to furnish himself with some added protective armour by collecting antique helmets.

Lorimer excels at his job, he is able to recognize when people are lying and have inflated their insurance claim but when one for 27 million pound claim is successfully reduced to 10 million pound payout his professional life begins to unravel.

His personal life is no less confused. He has trouble sleeping and spends nights studied and analysed at the 'Institute of Lucid Dreams'. He is having a casual affair with one of his former clients but becomes obsessed with an actress whom he tracks down and tries to win over.

The plot is meandering and whilst Lorimer isn't completely hapless he isn't a superhero either. 'Armadillo' is loosely a thriller but Boyd only allows Lorimer to see glimpses of the bigger picture. This vagueness is quite deliberate as Boyd tries to show that there are few easy answers here just as there are none in life.

There are touches of humour sprinkled throughout this book (Boyd certainly seemed to take pleasure in some of his characters' names). It is also a book with a message, you can never truly escape your past and mud rarely sticks to the wealthy, it's only the little men who get trod underfoot. But whilst I always enjoy his writing style (this is the fourth of his works that I've read) I can't help thinking that in this particular case he overplayed his hand. It ended up reading rather laddish and, for that reason alone, missed its mark. ( )

"Mud doesn't stick to people like us" says the chief executive of a successful insurance firm. He has all the right connections of course and probably the underlying theme in Boyd's novel is the class system when "Britain was on the make" in the late 1990's under the new Labour Government. Boyd's novel uses substantial doses of irony to make his points, but his irony is whimsical never straying into satire and so at the end of the novel one is left with the feeling that "it all worked out well enough in the end". A biting satire of the class system it is not.

Lorimer Black is an insurance loss adjuster and the novel opens with a routine visit to the owner of a factory who has made an insurance claim. Black is a little put out to find the owner has hung himself from a beam in his office. The police are called and Black feels himself under suspicion. From this moment on Black is playing catch-up as the mystery deepens: why had his boss sent him to this meeting when he had done all the preliminary work himself and why was his next job; a £27million claim way above his normal price bracket? Black's world begins to fall apart as he seems to be being manoeuvred into being some sort of fall guy. Along the way he has to deal with physical assaults from enraged customers and from the husband of a mysterious woman with whom he has fallen in love. His upper class colleague at work is sacked perhaps because of his part in the 27million deal and clings to Lorimer like a leech when he is thrown out by his wife. Lorimer has stretched himself financially and bought an ancient Greek helm for more money than he has in his bank account, just at the time when he has fallen out with his boss at work and is due to be sacked. Oh! and for good measure one of his clients is a famous rock star who is being sued for cancelling a string of concerts. London in the late nineties, when there is money to be made and those in the know are manoeuvring to grab what they can.

Lorimer Black is an honest hard working likeable guy, relative to most of the people around him and this is the hook that Boyd uses to draw his readers into the story. Lorimer Black is a sympathetic character, he is good to his family, he helps his friends when he can, but is hard enough to play the game in order to make himself rich. The mystery surrounding him and his own upbringing becomes more clear as the novel progresses and Boyd does a good job of explaining the work of a loss adjuster and the value of the insurance business in the modern world. It is the nefarious goings on around Lorimer that keep the pages turning and the light touch of the author who introduces a series of characters who are larger than life: the femme fatal, the overbearing boss, the upper class twit, the crazy rock star. If all this wasn't enough, Lorimer suffers from sleep deprivation and is undergoing some sort of dream therapy treatment. There is a lot going on, and it would take a far larger book than this one to resolve all the loose ends and Boyd is not interested in doing this. Boyd is playing it all for laughs and it is amusing enough. Nothing too deep, but Boyd does not insult his readers intelligence and has written a fast paced novel that revels in its South London locations. A good entertainment even if it feels a little old fashioned and so 3.5 stars. ( )

I seem to recall that when this book was originally published, just over twenty years ago, it drew slightly less critical acclaim than is normally lavished over William Boyd’s books. As a huge admirer of William Boyd, I clearly bought it very soon after its publication (my copy is a hardback from the first edition), but I have actually no recollection of having read it previously.

I have to say I enjoyed it. To be honest, it doesn’t match up to Restless or Any Human Heart, but then very few novels do. It marked a slight departure from his previous works as this was William Boyd’s first novel wholly set in Britain.

The central figure is known as Lorimer Black, and works for a firm acting as loss adjusters for a major insurance company. ‘Known as’ because we subsequently learn that Lorimer’s family are of Transnistrian descent, and his real name in Milomre Bloḉj. Lorimer remains close to his family, but not as close as they all are – his three elders sisters still live with their parents, while their brother lives just around the corner. Having taken to loss adjusting, Lorimer now lives in an elegant flat in Pimlico, although he has just bought a house in Silvertown, in east London.

We first encounter Lorimer as he arrives to attend an appointment with a recent claimant, whose factory had recently burned down. Harbouring suspicions about the fire, the insurance company had referred the application for loss adjustment consideration, and it had fallen to Lorimer. Turning up feeling nonchalant, and expecting a fairly straightforward opening discussion, Lorimer is aghast to find that the owner has hanged himself.

The police attend, and Lorimer, reeling from the shock, gives as much information as possible, before walking back to his car with a view to returning to the office. Just as he is about to pull out, a taxi comes hurtling by, blaring its horn. As Lorimer looks up his eyes fleetingly lock with those of the startlingly beautiful female passenger sitting in the back of the cab.

As if Lorimer doesn’t already have enough on his mind, he has been suffering from insomnia and is participating in a research study being overseen by one of his neighbours. This entails him spending several nights at a sleep laboraotory in Greenwich where he is fitted with electrodes so that his pulse and mental activities can be recorded while he sleeps (or at least tries to)

Tension builds right from the start, on as Lorimer has to negotiate the relentless foul temper of his boss, George Hogg, and a series of unexpected reorganisations within his firm. Shortly afterwards his car is vandalised, and he is mugged on the street.

Boyd relates all of this with his customary clarity of prose. The story is interleaved with extracts from ‘The Book of Transfiguration’, a journal kept by Lorimer, primarily to record his dreams, although it expands to include reflections on a wide range of aspects of life, including his observations on the great British café, and memories of some of his deeper student excesses. ( )