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The Action
"How far would you go to protect your sibling?" Nigel Kingsley lives with his sister Martha. He loves her dearly but realises that she has been a crippling influence on his life. Hazel Saunders is Nigel's ex-lover. And she also happens to be a novelist. While Nigel may miss her, there is certainly no love lost between the two women in his life. Especially when Martha is horrified to realise that she has been used as the inspiration for a fictional character when she comes across an advance copy of Hazel's latest novel. The conflict between Martha and Hazel escalates when Martha attempts to stop the publication of the book. "The Action" tells the claustrophobic relationship of Nigel Kingsley and his sister, Martha, in a story which is often funny, always moving and, in the end, poignantly tragic.
249 pages, Hardcover
First published September 4, 1978
10 people want to read
About the author
Francis King
78 books18 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Francis Henry King, CBE, was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.
He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto. He resigned to write full time in 1964.
He was a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and a Commander of the Order (CBE) in 1985.
Francis Henry King, CBE, was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.
He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto. He resigned to write full time in 1964.
He was a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and a Commander of the Order (CBE) in 1985.
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January 27, 2024
It's both a bit dispiriting, yet exhilarating, that no one has rated or reviewed this superb novel till now. King has unfortunately fallen into almost total obscurity, despite having been twice longlisted for the Booker Prize. And the genesis of this book is almost as fascinating as the book itself.
To wit: back in 1969, King was readying the publication of his 12th novel, A domestic animal, when a male friend purloined an advanced copy of the book, recognized himself in the unflattering minor character of Dame Winifred Harcourt, and threatened libel actions unless King expunged all objectionable content. Due to the financial hardship of fighting in the courts, King rewrote and changed the character, and the book was eventually published in 1970 (and subsequently longlisted for the 'Lost Booker' Prize).
Eight years later, King turned this horrendous experience into the book at hand - the story of lady novelist Hazel Saunders, whose largely autobiographical new novel falls into the hands of Martha Kingsley, the sister of her former paramour, Nigel, who recognizes herself in the character of Major Charles and demands the book be withdrawn.
Not only is it fascinating to see how King fictionalized (and gender reversed!) the details of his own ordeal, but on a line-by-line basis, his prose is just truly exquisite. The audacious ending is also unexpectedly poignant and says a lot about King's recognition of his culpability in hurting his friend's feelings.
From the Booker website: "In 1978, A.J. Ayer, the philosopher and chairman of that year’s Booker judges, apparently took the opportunity of the prize dinner to express his opinion that King’s novel The Action - which was inspired by the complications of a libel case that King had found himself entangled in following the publication of his autobiographical novel A Domestic Animal (1970) - should have been on the shortlist."
From The Guardian's obit: "... he had suffered a long- running legal action over his 1970 novel A Domestic Animal, about unreciprocated homosexual love, which, although it never reached court, was to land him with substantial costs. King was living in Brighton where a neighbor, the former Labour MP Tom Skeffington-Lodge, read a pre-publication copy of the novel and took exception to a politician that King included. King called her Dame Winifred Harcourt, but Skeffington-Lodge considered that King had created a thinly disguised portrait of him. King included a scene lifted directly from Skeffington-Lodge's life and thought that by changing the character into a woman he was legally safe.
The streak of naivety that marked King's career surfaced when he wrote an apology to Skeffington-Lodge, who had sought an opinion from Lord Hailsham, then a practicing barrister. With this admission, King was advised to settle the case out of court and the novel was withdrawn days before it was due to be published. However, that was not the end of the story. King substantially revised A Domestic Animal – like much of his work "suffused with homosexuality", as one commentator remarked, and which he himself thought came "nearest to saying what I wanted to say", but which "cost me most". The novel, once published, was rarely out of print over the next 40 years. Last year, it was longlisted for the "lost Booker" prize.
King used the experience in two subsequent books, The Action, a novel, published in 1978, which tells of a neurotic woman who brings a lawsuit against a writer she is convinced has libeled her, and his autobiography Yesterday Came Suddenly (1993)."
To wit: back in 1969, King was readying the publication of his 12th novel, A domestic animal, when a male friend purloined an advanced copy of the book, recognized himself in the unflattering minor character of Dame Winifred Harcourt, and threatened libel actions unless King expunged all objectionable content. Due to the financial hardship of fighting in the courts, King rewrote and changed the character, and the book was eventually published in 1970 (and subsequently longlisted for the 'Lost Booker' Prize).
Eight years later, King turned this horrendous experience into the book at hand - the story of lady novelist Hazel Saunders, whose largely autobiographical new novel falls into the hands of Martha Kingsley, the sister of her former paramour, Nigel, who recognizes herself in the character of Major Charles and demands the book be withdrawn.
Not only is it fascinating to see how King fictionalized (and gender reversed!) the details of his own ordeal, but on a line-by-line basis, his prose is just truly exquisite. The audacious ending is also unexpectedly poignant and says a lot about King's recognition of his culpability in hurting his friend's feelings.
From the Booker website: "In 1978, A.J. Ayer, the philosopher and chairman of that year’s Booker judges, apparently took the opportunity of the prize dinner to express his opinion that King’s novel The Action - which was inspired by the complications of a libel case that King had found himself entangled in following the publication of his autobiographical novel A Domestic Animal (1970) - should have been on the shortlist."
From The Guardian's obit: "... he had suffered a long- running legal action over his 1970 novel A Domestic Animal, about unreciprocated homosexual love, which, although it never reached court, was to land him with substantial costs. King was living in Brighton where a neighbor, the former Labour MP Tom Skeffington-Lodge, read a pre-publication copy of the novel and took exception to a politician that King included. King called her Dame Winifred Harcourt, but Skeffington-Lodge considered that King had created a thinly disguised portrait of him. King included a scene lifted directly from Skeffington-Lodge's life and thought that by changing the character into a woman he was legally safe.
The streak of naivety that marked King's career surfaced when he wrote an apology to Skeffington-Lodge, who had sought an opinion from Lord Hailsham, then a practicing barrister. With this admission, King was advised to settle the case out of court and the novel was withdrawn days before it was due to be published. However, that was not the end of the story. King substantially revised A Domestic Animal – like much of his work "suffused with homosexuality", as one commentator remarked, and which he himself thought came "nearest to saying what I wanted to say", but which "cost me most". The novel, once published, was rarely out of print over the next 40 years. Last year, it was longlisted for the "lost Booker" prize.
King used the experience in two subsequent books, The Action, a novel, published in 1978, which tells of a neurotic woman who brings a lawsuit against a writer she is convinced has libeled her, and his autobiography Yesterday Came Suddenly (1993)."
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