I was quite looking forward to reaching ‘Going Postal’ in my gradual re-read of the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s lengthy Discworld series. It’s one of the books I read aloud to my teenage sons in 2005, having bought it in hardback soon after publication, and I recalled liking it very much.
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I had even remembered what happened in the first chapter - a very dramatic opening to the book - which results in the condemned crook Moist von Lipwig being appointed as the new Postmaster General for the Ankh Morpork post office. The post office has been entirely dormant for some years and there have been others appointed to this role, but they all suffered unpleasant accidents… some quite recently. However Moist has no option but to accept, and no chance to escape as he is determinedly followed and tracked down by a Golem known as Mr Pump.
Most of the former post office staff have long gone, but two remain. There’s the elderly Mr Grout, who believes in dosing himself with all kinds of dodgy remedies, and never washes. There’s also the younger Stanley, a gangly, nervous young man who only becomes enthusiastic when talking about his all-consuming hobby of collecting pins.
Moist has worked as a conman and swindler all his life, and was apparently very good at it, but he isn’t entirely lost to emotion, and does have a kind of standard of decency. He will engage in a fair fight, although he prefers to avoid physical pain, but he tries to avoid hurting the innocent, where possible, and is proud of the fact that he’s never killed anyone. Not directly, anyway…
It’s a good story, the first of the main Discworld books to be written in chapters; that’s something I had not remembered. And I’d forgotten most of the details of the book. Moist does not just have to restart a post office that’s stopped doing anything, he has to wade through mountains of undelivered mail, some of it going back decades, blocking up doorways and covering furniture everywhere in the huge post office.
He also finds that he’s in competition with the ‘clacks’ towers - a kind of Discworld semaphore-based phone system that uses Disc-style computers and geeky people who like numbers… but which has been taken over by a ruthless conman who’s as talented as Moist, but without his hint of humanity.
Lord Vetinari appears several times, smooth and tyrannical, yet doing what he can for the city. And there’s a wonderful section about the invention of stamps which I appreciated very much.
Still one of my favourite of the Discworld novels, probably because it’s so character-based and Moist is a wonderful, complex character who’s likeable despite his criminal tendencies. I hope it won’t be another eighteen years before I read it again.
Definitely recommended if you’re a fan of these books. If you haven’t read any Discworld books before, this could make a good starting point, as most of the characters are new to this story.
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