Mr. Toppit

By: Charles Elton

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

“And out of the Darkwood Mr. Toppit comes, and he comes not for you, or for me, but for all of us.”

When the Hayseed Chronicles, an obscure series of children’s books, becomes world famous, millions of readers debate the significance of that enigmatic last line and of the shadowy figure, Mr. Toppit, who dominates the books. The author, Arthur Hayman, an unsuccessful screenwriter mown down by a concrete truck in Soho, never reaps the benefits of the books’ success. The legacy passes to his widow, Martha, and her children - the fragile Rachel, and Luke, reluctantly immortalized as Luke Hayseed, the central character of his father’s books. But others want their share, particularly Laurie, the overweight stranger from California who comforted Arthur as he lay dying and has a mysterious agenda of her own that will change all their lives, for buried deep in the books lie secrets which threaten to be revealed as the family begins to crumble under the heavy burden of their inheritance.

Spanning several decades, from the heyday of the British film industry after the war to the cut-throat world of show business in Los Angeles, Mr. Toppit is a riveting tale of the unexpected effects of sudden fame and fortune. Not since Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up! has a novel managed to capture a family and a society to such wonderfully funny and painful effect.

Charles Elton worked as a designer and editor in publishing before becoming a director of the literary agency Curtis Brown. Since 1991 he has worked in television and has been executive producer in drama at ITV since 2000. Among his productions are The Railway Children, the Oscar-nominated short Syrup, Andrew Davies’ adaptation of Northanger Abbey, and the recent series Time of Your Life.

©2009 Darkwood, Ltd. (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Witty, engrossing, moving…One hot mess of a family romance.” (London Times)

“An extraordinary debut…Dark, funny…jangly with secrets.” (Sunday Times, London)

“Mr. Toppit is a darkly comic, thoroughly engaging narrative…Charles Elton’s witty and unsettling debut novel explores the emotional turmoil that results when a family’s private history gets transformed into public myth.” (Tom Perrotta, New York Times best-selling author)