Thomas Turridge by Augustus Fate

1863 The Oxford Commemoration thanks to Thames.me.uk 

Title: Thomas Turridge 

Author: Augustus Fate

Publisher: not known 

Source book: The Watermark by Sam Mill

I keep telling people that authors can’t seem to stop themselves writing about fictional writers and the fictional books their characters have written. Well, they do say you should write about what you know.

So here’s a book I read about in The Guardian at the end of August 2024. And here’s the review for you to read for yourselves. See what I mean?

Fictional author Augustus Fate has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize seven times, and his books are bestsellers but he realises that his characters are not as convincing as they should be, and lack genuine emotion. That slightly begs the question of how he ever makes it on to the Booker Prize list in the first place but I doubt we will ever get to the bottom of that.

Anyway, which you may recall is French for anyway, despite living in darkest Wales, Fate - which is to say Augustus - invites a young couple to tea. He gives them a magical tea which somehow transports their consciousness into his unfinished book, Thomas Turridge. Meanwhile, their bodies remain in Wales, probably in the spare bedroom. [I have no idea if their families, workplaces, doctors, dentists, friends, credit card/mortgage providersever tried to contact this couple because you might think somebody would.]

Thomas Turridge is set in a poor pastiche of Victorian Oxford which is ultimately destroyed by the untimely arrival of a helicopter. Interesting plot device.

I hope to have more to say when I have read the source book which sounds rather fun.

Thanks to Food.com