In search of new writers
Archive for December, 2009
Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb
Dec 22nd
This is a fascinating novel by Eli Gottlieb. Nick Framingham is coming to terms with the death of his best friend, Rob Castor, who had seemed to have a stellar career in New York as an author. Not only has Rob committed suicide, but he also murdered his ex-girlfriend Kate Pierce. That would be traumatic for anyone, but Rob’s death is just the first in the series of dominoes that shatters Nick’s life. Lucy, Nick’s wife, has problems with the fact that Nick seems to be absenting himself away from her and the children in the wake of his grief, and is none too impressed when he meets Belinda again, since Belinda was Nick’s first love, as well as Rob’s sister. As his marriage disintegrates, Nick tries to engage with his children, but seems unable to loosen their bond to their mother in any way. This stokes up memories of the distant relationship that he had with his own father. The decline of Nick’s marriage is superbly dealt with by Eli Gottlieb as he takes Nick and Lucy on an all-too familiar journey. As painful as their imminent separation is to Nick, this is nothing compared to the ghosts that rise up from his childhood, as old family secrets seem to threaten his whole concept of identity… This is a beautifully related narrative, although one would have thought that one of the secrets concerning Nick’s past would have been revealed when he first started dating Belinda. There’s much drama to be had in this novel from the death of the prudish conventions that were observed by the previous generation. I found the scene that depicted Kate’s murder to be suitably poetic (since it involved writers as both assailant and victim). Now You See Him is a very compelling novel that never fails to surprise in its relation of Nick’s deepest dark secrets…
Daniel Davies’ The Isle of Dogs V. Denis Robert’s Happiness
Dec 9th
Daniel Davies’ The Isle of Dogs is a brilliant debut novel that looks at the relatively new British phenomenon that is dogging. Denis Robert’s Happiness concerns the affair between a writer and a young arts graduate, which depicts similar scenes of seedy sex. In tone, it’s quite similar to a recent episode of the French crime drama Spiral II that looked at Paris’s swinging clubs, and maybe this novel was the inspiration for the episode. Happiness’s press release states the belief that this novel reclaims erotic fiction for men, but I’m afraid that it left me cold. Its structure, which involves the man and woman relating their point of view on opposing pages, is innovative, but I’m not sure that it really works here, since both protagonists are hardly strong characters and are quite anonymous. Denis Robert probably did this on purpose, but it means that the reader has little invested in either of the characters, and doesn’t really care what happens to them. Although Happiness runs to 200 pages, it’s more of a novella in length rather than a novel, since many of the passages don’t fill a page. Since the man is the writer, it feels very much as though he’s in charge, and it’s he who controls and perhaps edit the narrative that his lover writes, as he purloins the notebook from her bag towards the end. Since her narrative continues after this, her thoughts towards the end must be constructed by the writer as they were at the beginning. Although I only recently read this short book recently, I really can’t remember all that much about Happiness, as it didn’t leave much of an impression on me at all.
Daniel Davies’ The Isle of Dogs is similarly structured, as Jeremy Shepherd’s narrative is framed by another writer, and it also involves the seedier side of sex. This is where the similarities end, for where the tone of Happiness is quite draining, The Isle of Dogs is very fresh and raring to go in comparison. It helps that the Shep’s first person narrative is far more engaging than those found in Happiness, probably due to the fact that his thoughts and feelings are more fully reported, and his story is far less disjointed. As well as dogging, The Isle of Dogs concerns the preponderance of CCTV in the current British surveillance culture. Of course, the irony is that one of the main points of dogging is to watch other people having sex, yet Shep and his colleagues always have to be on the watch out for the police that are out to spoil their fun. Arranging liaisons on the internet is convenient, but it does lead to some surprising encounters, such as that between Shep and one of his work colleagues. The Isle of Dogs, as the title perhaps suggests, goes beyond this to become a state of the nation novel, as it also deals with the fractious issue of immigration. Despite the many sex scenes, Daniel Davies would never win the Bad Sex Award, as there is nothing that cloys in his depictions of these liaisons. The Isle of Dogs also contains some wry, arch humour. The only fault that I could find with the novel is that it does veer slightly towards melodrama in the end, but this really does not detract from this fantastic novel too much.
