Book Summary and Reviews of King of the Badgers by Philip Hensher

Book Summary

Hanmouth, situated where the Hand River flows into the Bristol Channel, is usually quiet and undisturbed. But it becomes the center of national attention when an eight-year-old girl vanishes. This tragic event serves to expose the range of segregated existences in the town, as spectrums of class, wealth, and lifestyle are blurred in the investigation.

Behind Hanmouth’s closed doors and pastoral façade, the extraordinary individual lives of the community are laid bare. The undisclosed passions of a quiet international aid worker are set against his wife, seemingly a paragon of virtue to the outside world, while a recently widowed old woman tells a story that details her late discovery of sexual gratification. And a group of gay men, known as the Bears, have a drug-fueled party. As the search for the missing girl continues, the case is made for increased surveillance, and old notions of privacy begin to crack. King of the Badgers is a powerful study of the vital importance of individuality and the increasingly intrusive hand of political powers. It is another devastating—but frequently very funny— portrait of England from one of its finest novelists.