Anthills and Stars

There was a great review in The Telegraph and Argus yesterday. Here it is.

Anthills and Stars by Kevin Duffy.

Set in 1968, the year of political revolutions after the Summer of Love, an unmarried hippy couple, Solomon and Cas, arrive with Leo, their son of 18 months, in this Calderdale backwater to set up house in Prospect Street.
Their next-door neighbour, Ethel Hebblethwaite, is a cross between Nora Batty and Hyacinth Bucket; the difference being she is a righteous Roman Catholic – not a hypocrite, as the novel reveals, but ardent.
Their arrival causes uproar. But after Solomon deflowers Ethel’s 19-year-old grand-daughter Margaret, the local war against the flower children gathers hysterical momentum, culminating in a petition to Bishop Bone to exorcise the flared-jean spawn of Satan before the entire town is corrupted.
Stir into the mix a couple of insane zealots, a comic policeman and a Roman Catholic priest, Father O’Dowd, troubled about his sexuality, and you have all the ingredients of an English Father Ted seen through the eyes of Joe Orton or Peter Tinniswood, with perhaps just a dash of David Nobbs.

Go buy a copy or The Moose gets it.