R. P. Lister

I have no inkling of the identity of this questing beast of the title, even though I have read the book three times trying to find it. My only clue is the tenuous connection between King Pellinore of The Once and Future King (which I have not yet finished) and Pellinew, the hapless Englishman whose friendship with the narrator, Michael Mendel, is recounted with a certain wry bemusement. The two men meet in the cab of a lorry, in Belgium, during World War II, then bump into each other by chance in a London pub after both have been invalided out of the army, Pellinew having lost parts of his stomach and Mendel an arm. On a backdrop of wartime London, bombs dropping and buildings exploding, the two men become friends. Mendel makes films, Pellinew drifts along living on his meagre savings till finally he learns how to type and from there manages to float into a career. Despite his self-effacing nature, he attracts several attractive and intelligent female admirers who in turn are admired by Mendel, rather more enterprising in his attentions, leading to some romantic entanglement of which Pellinew is blissfully unaware. We also see the social side of London during the war years, and get involved in dream interpretation and the nature of fate, with unexpected surprises at the end of the novel... but I will reveal no more about the plot.

Lister's writing style is understated, tongue-in-cheek, funny, uncompromising and unusual; I underlined several passages but here is just one:
"Marie was looking terrible. Her face was pale, and there were dark rings around her eyes, so that she looked like a beautiful, sick Egyptian cat wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. It was good to see her again[...] She walked with restrained undulations, rather as a leopard might walk if it had had a sound Church of England upbringing. She would have been voluptuous if she had not so clearly been intellectual; being both, she could hardly avoid being neurotic. I knew, seeing her again, that my resolve not to see her again had been a wise one, and was glad I had broken it."… (mehr)