Will Hodgkinson - The House is Full of Yogis

Borough

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Will Hodgkinson 2014

Will Hodgkinson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007514632

Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007514618

Version: 2015-02-06

Once upon a time in the 1980s, The Hodgkinsons were just like any other family.

Liz and Neville lived with their sons, Tom and Will, in a semi-detached house in the suburbs of Southwest London. Neville was an award-winning medical correspondent. Liz was a high-earning tabloid journalist. Friends and neighbours turned up to their parties clutching bottles of Mateus Rosé. Then, while recovering from a life-threatening bout of food poisoning, Neville had a Damascene revelation.

Life was never the same again.

Out went drunken dinner parties and Victorian décor schemes. In came hordes of white-clad Yogis meditating in the living room and lectures on the forthcoming apocalypse. Liz took the opportunity to wage all-out war on convention, from denouncing motherhood as a form of slavery to promoting her book Sex Is Not Compulsory on television chat shows, just when Will was discovering girls for the first time.

Will Hodgkinson grew up in a larger-than-life family. His father, Neville, was an award-winning science writer until he received a calling from the Brahma Kumaris in 1983. He currently lives with them on a retreat in Oxfordshire. His mother, Liz, continues to write for the Daily Mail . His brother, Tom, created the Idler . As well as working as the rock and pop critic for The Times , Will decided it was high-time to record his family’s colourful story. Will lives in southeast London with his wife and two children.

‘A touching account of a family thrust by mid-life crisis into meditation and spiritual awakening … [A] sweet, quirkish gem of a memoir … an affecting, and very funny, evocation of adolescence’

Mick Brown, Telegraph

‘A My Family and Other Middle-Class Animals let loose in the jungle of Thatcher’s suburban Britain. The result is a howlingly entertaining memoir that is raw, affectionate and, unbelievably, true’

Helen Davies, Sunday Times

‘[A] charming, entertaining book’

Melanie Reid, The Times

‘I have been banned from reading in bed as it makes me laugh out loud too much … Punishingly funny, and wonderfully written’

Rachel Johnson, Mail on Sunday

‘Endearing’

Ben East, Observer

‘[Hodgkinson] has a lovely, light style … his set pieces are very funny … He is attentive to the minute social divisions that define the British middle classes … it’s a relief to read a memoir that is so affectionate, so moan-free, so reluctant to apportion blame’

Rachel Cooke, New Statesman

‘An utterly charming, funny and touching memoir’

Sathnam Sanghera, author of Marriage Material

‘A rip-roaringly funny read’

Viv Groskop, Red Magazine

‘Thoughtful, heartfelt and so well drawn … [It] deserves to become as well loved as My Family and Other Animals ’

Travis Elborough, author of London Bridge in America

‘I laughed until I levitated’

Jarvis Cocker

For Nev, Mum and Tom

Some names have been changed.

(But most have stayed the same.)

Contents

Cover

Title Page The House Is Full of Yogis WILL HODGKINSON

Copyright Copyright Copyright About the Book About the Author Praise for The House is Full of Yogis Dedication 1. The First Party 2. The Boat Holiday 3. The Wrong Chicken 4. Nev Returns 5. Enter The Brahma Kumaris 6. The End Of The World 7. The Second Party 8. Forest School Camps 9. Delinquency 10. Frensham Heights 11. The Third Party 12. Florida 13. Sex Is Not Compulsory 14. Surrender Epilogue Glossary Acknowledgements Picture Section About the Publisher Borough An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2014 Copyright © Will Hodgkinson 2014 Will Hodgkinson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780007514632 Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007514618 Version: 2015-02-06