The Hippopotamus
Encyclopedia
The Hippopotamus is a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

, first published in 1994. It is written, in part, as an epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...

.

Plot summary

The "hippo" of the title (occasionally referred to as "the stupid hippo" and given to wallowing in long baths) is Edward (Ted/Tedward) Lennox Wallace, an aging, lecherous, one-time hell-raising poet, reduced by diminishing poetic talent to working as a theatre critic. The story opens with the aftermath of Ted being fired from his job on a newspaper.

At the suggestion of a sick goddaughter, Jane (suffering from leukaemia), he goes to stay at the Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 country house of old schoolfriend and Army colleague from National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...

, Lord Michael Logan and his wife Lady Anne, to investigate unspecified mysterious goings-on.

Ted reports back to Jane regularly, in the form of long, rambling letters, apprising her of events at Swafford Hall whilst also offering his views on numerous other issues (women, art, poetry, sex, morality and modern life being favorite topics), all the time attempting to uncover the nature of the unusual events that Jane has instructed him to look out for.

Over the course of his stay it gradually becomes apparent that other house guests are ascribing healing
Faith healing
Faith healing is healing through spiritual means. The healing of a person is brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate a divine presence and power toward correcting disease and disability. Belief in divine intervention in illness or...

 powers to one of Logan's children, David (Ted's other godchild), and indeed it is in the hope that he might bestow his 'talent' upon them that they have descended upon Swafford Hall. Amongst the assembled guests are a witty and hugely camp, but rebarbative defrocked minister and TV producer, a businessman and his wife and rather gawky teenage daughter, a friend of Jane's, and Jane's mother, a woman Ted has crossed paths with disastrously many years earlier.

The life stories of the tycoon Logan and his family, as well as Ted's own, are intertwined to provide a colourful and credible back story. The highly comical story is run through with a stream of sexual practices, some more unusual than others, as Ted uncovers the means by which David delivers his 'healing'.

The story contains several (spoof) poems and limerick
Limerick
Limerick is the third largest city in the Republic of Ireland, and the principal city of County Limerick and Ireland's Mid-West Region. It is the fifth most populous city in all of Ireland. When taking the extra-municipal suburbs into account, Limerick is the third largest conurbation in the...

s.
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