Golf is a game that lends itself to humour. There are joke books in abundance; so, too, golf-themed greetings cards. However, comparatively little by the way of humorous long-form fiction of the game has been published. Maybe it is too hard to avoid the pitfalls of clichéd figures and attitudes. PG Wodehouse wrote a series of golfing short stories, and a few others have attempted golf novels. But it is a surprising few in the circumstances. Into this underpopulated field comes the wonderfully funny novel Summer At Tangents by Roderick Easdale.
The author has written a vivid comic novel set in a village dominated by its golf club. The author certainly knows this territory. He has worked as a golf journalist for a quarter of a century and is, or has been, a member of six golf clubs. He has written five non-fiction books, one of which was about PG Wodehouse’s novels, but this is his debut novel.
Summer at Tangents is published by Brindle Books, an independent publishing house based in Yorkshire. Head of Brindle Books, Richard Hinchcliffe, explains: “As soon as I read the manuscript, I was determined that we would publish this book. In Summer at Tangents, Roderick has managed to create character-driven humour which is funny without ever seeming cruel – something that many modern authors fail to do.”
The novel depicts the positive role golf clubs can play in their communities. Tangents is a decaying village. What’s left is a church that few attend and a struggling golf club run by well-meaning but incompetent committeemen. Now the diocese threatens to close the church.
The vicar’s good friend Willoughby Cornwallis is possessed of a sense of mischief and is instinctively anti the establishment yet outwardly a pillar of it locally. A wily golf club politician, he acts to save the church in ways which also benefit the club but involve duping almost everyone along the way.
Summer at Tangents is a comic novel but also, ultimately, a cleverly plotted feel-good story.
