I borrowed a copy of Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down from a friend (decent read, by the way), but kept getting irritated throughout the book because the swear words were censored (or so I thought) so inconsistently. It was strange that in the first and last parts of the book, words like ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ would appear like this:
F—!
C—!
All of the common “swear” words were like this, inlcuding the word ‘piss.’ But, in part two, all the words were spelled out, no matter how offensive they might be. Is this what Hornby intended, or did I borrow an incompletely censored version of the book. FWIW, my friend purchased the novel at Sam’s Club, and since Wal-Mart censors music, I guessed they’d censor books, too.
Um, no. I don’t believe that you have the special censored version. That’s just how it’s written. Fun read, IMO. But Hornby has been going downhill ever since is first novel. =\
As far as I recall, when the narration was from the POV of the spinstery lady, the swearing was censored like you describe. So it was a feature of her characterisation, rather than inconsistent editing.
Your reading comphrension leaves something to be desired. Cuss words are censored only when the point of view is Maureen’s. When it switches (accordingly labeled at the head of such sectional changes), the words are not censored.