Ian Richards - Brummie Road

Published: 2014

Reading is essentially about escapism. Novels take us to exotic, foreign places; to otherworldly paradises or dystopian hells. Brummie Road certainly took me to a strange and unfamiliar territory – the world of the football fan. And, as many a fan who has followed their team doggedly through the highs and lows may tell you, it can be both a heaven and a hell.

                I’m not a football fan myself, and prior to reading this book (which, for the sake of fairness, I should point out was written by a mate of mine), I knew literally one fact about West Bromwich Albion – that their ground, The Hawthorns, is the highest above sea level of any English top-flight club (it really is, I checked). I’d never heard of Jeff Astle and, as far as I was concerned, The Three Degrees were a successful trio of R&B singers. So, whilst a story following the fortunes of the club through the experiences of some of its supporters would be an obvious recommendation for anyone who’s followed their team through thick and thin, what about the rest of us?

                Written in a rapid-fire present tense that reflects the eb and flow of everyday life, Brummie Road kicks off (sorry) in 1964. Billy and ‘Jonah’ Cartwright are just out of school and life revolves around pubs, music, and above all, standing on the terraces of the Brummie Road end, where they watch every Albion match they can get to. With the beer flowing, employment plentiful, and the new trend of singing on the terraces spurring their team on to victory, it looks like only Billy’s inability to approach that girl at the bus stop might complicate things. But real life outside of the Bovril and fag smoke scented oasis of the terraces is destined to intervene. Over the next four years leading up to Albion’s FA cup victory, the faltering economy and racial tensions in their local area, combined with complications in their own lives, mean Billy and Jonah will be left no choice but to face up to the realities of the world outside their blue-and-white bubble.

                West Brom’s post-1968 glories are akin to looking for several jam jars containing tea-lights scattered around a rainy field in the middle of the night, so the second and third parts of the novel hone in on two other periods where the team were once again making waves: 1978-79, and 1991-94, during which we catch up with both the central and peripheral characters at different stages in their lives. For me, Jonah is by far the most interesting character, combining a swaggering, cocky exterior with an internal honesty about his own myriad inadequacies.  In a way, I see him as representing the feel and spirit of the novel itself: fun and light hearted, to begin with, but with a darker core that becomes more and more difficult to avoid as the story progresses. Unfortunately, not all of the central characters are as deeply developed; we don’t get to know Kath well, for example, she’s more of a vehicle for bad things to happen to.

                Speaking of the novel’s  – and the sport’s – darker side, football hooliganism is one of the themes dealt with. Without first-hand experience I cannot honestly say how accurately this is portrayed – especially because our perceptions of the phenomenon are, even now, so coloured by probably heavily sensationalised newspaper headlines. That said, Brummie Road isn’t about hooliganism, and certainly doesn’t glamorise it. John King’s novel The Football Factory said all that needed to be said about hooliganism in this period, to the extent that it arguably edged too close to lionising hooligans or glamorising their violence. Richards works on the assumption that his readers have probably read that novel, and doesn’t waste time covering the same ground. It’s there, though, as an unavoidable backdrop. The characters largely eschew the violence themselves, despite getting caught up in it to varying extents.

                Another issue of the era touched upon is racism and immigration, a topic which provides some of the novel’s most poignant moments. It negotiates racial issues like a grimy, Midlands, Bovril-flavoured version of White Teeth. Elsewhere, it effectively juxtaposes humour with self-awareness, like one character drunkenly attempting to explain the Gulf War in footballing terms (who hasn’t experienced that moment of clarity, despite the alcohol, when you realise no-one’s got a clue what you’re trying to explain?)

                For me, it was one of those books where you finish it, think ‘that was a good laugh’, or you remember the sweet bits... and then it gradually dawns on you that it dealt with some heavy themes, but they just snuck by – a bit like real life, you just get on with it. If it’s really about anything other than the Albion, then it’s about how people navigate their way through life’s traumas, finding comfort and escape where they can whilst knowing that, for everyone else, life rumbles on regardless.

                So, whilst Brummie Road is definitely an obvious recommendation for any footie fan, past or present, it’s emphatically not just for them. Bill Shankley might once have said that whilst some people think football is a matter of life or death, “I assure you it’s much more serious than that”, Richards knows it’s not, and so does Brummie Road.

Stephen King - The Dark Tower series

Published: Between 1970 and 2004

Like the earlier ones, which deserve it, the later books in Stephen King’s sprawling seven book epic, The Dark Tower, garner four or five star ratings on Amazon. It’s anyone’s guess why. Perhaps readers are too embarrassed, having struggled through the last few thousand pages, to admit having disliked it? Despite the positive user reviews, I cannot find any good reason to recommend this overblown saga to anyone, unless you’re a die-hard King fan or are doing a lengthy sentence in one of those prisons where government cuts have abolished the library.

                Yet it all started so well. The Dark Tower series (comprising seven books: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower) started life as a magazine-serialised novella (latterly published as the first book in the series) back in about 1970 that introduced us to an intriguing figure, Roland the Gunslinger. The desert landscape and hitching-post townships in which we first meet Roland initially have an Old-West aura, but references to 20^th Century songs such as ‘Hey Jude’, mutant animals and atomic powered water pumps soon suggest something more malevolent and gone-wrong on this world (things have ‘moved on’ as we are endlessly reminded). I was swept along as much by the instinct to hunt for clues to the fate of this apparently once-advanced society as I was by King’s effortlessly deft writing.

                Early on we learn two things about Roland: that he is a ‘gunslinger’, a kind of peacekeeper / lawmaker; and that he is on a quest for the Dark Tower (of which more later). We subsequently learn that Roland’s world is only one of many, because the universe consists of different dimensions around its literal and metaphorical centre-point, the imperilled Dark Tower which Roland is driven to both reach and protect. It’s possible, by means of varying degrees of danger, to cross between the worlds, and in this way, in the second book, Roland draws his fellow, initially reluctant questers: New York junkie Eddie, multiple-personality-disorder Odetta, and more-perceptive-than-his-years Jake (all from ‘our’ world). Together they’re Roland’s ka-tet (yeah, King pretty much runs riot with the made-up words thing from this point onwards). The second and third books – the high point in my opinion – pluck us unsuspectingly from the relatively slow-paced desert trek of The Gunslinger and plunge us headlong into real-world New York of the 1980s and 1960s respectively, as Roland must get to grips with Eddie and Odetta’s world and coerce them, via whatever means, to join his quest. The next thing I knew (and, at the speed I read them, it really did feel that way) they’re fighting to escape the post-apocalyptic, one-time high tech metropolis of Lud together in The Waste Lands, one of King’s best-paced novels.

                The second and third books are exciting, imaginative and action packed, equal to any of King’s best-known novels. Number four, Wizard and Glass, is essentially a self-contained story of Roland’s lost love – diverting enough, but after the gathering pace of the previous three I felt like the series had gone off the boil a bit, and never really regains its momentum. Tellingly, this coincides – from this instalment onwards – with King’s attempts to flesh out his worldview and what the Dark Tower’s really all about. I’d argue that he never properly succeeds in this (probably because he was making up the story as he went along, initially) and the whole work, as a result, feels like less than the sum of its parts. Despite the subsequent novels getting interminably longer, I never felt like I got to know or develop any real affection for the characters in the way that I did in, say, It (still King’s finest work). Odetta (Susannah) in particular becomes a bit of a non-entity after her dual-personality problems are resolved.

                Although less compulsive than the earlier novels, Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla are at least coherent, engaging, and usually strike a reasonable balance between the main series plot arc, and their own individual stories. Yes, the self-indulgent references to King’s other work become more frequent as he tries to use the Dark Tower series to link up and underpin the rest of his work (basically, all of his non-Dark Tower stories take place within the Dark Tower macroverse, which explains all the supernatural stuff) and yes, this can seem clunky at times. But it doesn’t prepare you for the literary kick-in-the-nuts that King saves until (almost) last: he writes himself in. Yes, really. And not in the wry, ironic, (potentially) clever breaking-the-fourth-wall kind of way, either. It’s in the getting his own characters to save his life in the (actual) near-fatal road accident in around 2000 kind of way. Because on one level of the Dark Tower, all of it is a story in a Stephen King book, making him like a sort of god. Oh dear. It would be wrong to condemn the entire series for this remarkably hubristic indulgence. But it’s also true that this element could, and should, have all been cut without any harm at all being done to the rest of the story.

                Even leaving King’s own appearance aside, the last few books (the final one in particular) constantly feel like they ought to have been at least 20% shorter (hey, it’s actually more like 40%), via the removal of irrelevant scenes or chapters, and the paring-down on wafflingly unnecessary description of everything (minor characters, buildings, snow, rusty bathtub floors, everything). When not over-writing in this way, King is still capable of producing top-notch prose, but sadly the latter Dark Tower books miss out on this treatment. You can almost imagine him, past caring but doggedly forcing himself to bang out X thousand words per day, churning this stuff out. The in-references become tiresome rather than rewarding, leading to the suspicion that King is substituting inspiration for self-derivation. It’s no coincidence that King’s best books in recent years, minor gems like Joyland, owe nothing to either the Dark Tower macroverse or his earlier works. The ‘boss’ baddie, meanwhile, The Crimson King (the one to whom many of the villains we meet along the way to the Dark Tower are mere servants) is ultimately disappointing when he finally shows up. As for the real conclusion – reaching the Dark Tower itself – well, I’m not going to let anyone plough increasingly drudgingly through a seven-novel fantasy series only to have the end spoiled for them. At any rate, it’s probably best left down to the ‘make up your own mind’ school of thought.

                There’s an almost inevitable disappointment to finishing a major series of books; they almost never satisfy in the way they built themselves up to. But at their best, they should leave you feeling bereft and wondering what could take their place in your life. Not The Dark Tower, though. I was just grateful to be done with the damn thing. The lasting impression is that the series was at its best in its earlier days, when King had little idea where it was heading. Even so, I don’t doubt that, with a bit of judicial fat-trimming in some places and fleshing out in others, this wouldn’t be a more satisfying and coherent read. But is it King’s magnus-opus, his crowning achievement? I don’t think so. The Dark Tower (and its sodding Beams) ought to stand as a testimony to the practical truth that all authors, no matter how successful, famous or prolific, must still have their work subjected to the attentions of a dispassionate, hard-nosed editor.

Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary

Published: 1998

So, no book reviews for a while, then. This may have had something to do with the twin addictions of the TV series Breaking Bad, which ought to come with a government warning, and Stephen King’s sprawling, seven book magnus opus, The Dark Tower (review forthcoming when I’ve finished it). But then my birthday, for an age I’d not care to mention, rolled around again, and suddenly I was inundated with books from family members and friends who know what really gets me going. One of these was The Rum Diary.

                Despite the well-worn maxim about not judging a book by its cover, I was practically infatuated with this one before I even opened it. In the black-and-white picture, a young, toned, shorts-wearing man sips a glass of something (rum, the title suggests) whilst making notes on a journalist’s pad on his lap. He’s got his feet up on a table containing empty beer bottles, and in the background is a concrete hotel block, peppered with balconies and fringed with palm trees. From the perspective of another grim Cumbrian winter, I couldn’t wait to start it. The knowledge that it was written back in the early 1960s, but not published until relatively recently, added to the appeal. I wasn’t disappointed. It turned out to be one of those novels so good you don’t want to begin another one afterwards. But the life portrayed in the novel turned out to be far more nuanced and ambiguous than the cover photo suggested.

                Paul Kemp, a vagrant journalist in his early thirties, has pitched up in San Juan, Peurto Rico’s capital, in the late ‘fifties, for a job on an English-language newspaper. He doesn’t speak any Spanish, or for that matter have any significant journalistic talent that we can discern. But he knows the right places to get a decent, inexpensive shot of rum and a hamburger, and that seems to be more important. Wall to wall heavy boozing features strongly, along with a pleasing 1950s disregard to driving drunk, turning up to work drunk, or doing practically anything without a few beers in an exotic land where “men sweat twenty-four hours a day.” Most of the itinerant hacks who write the paper don’t wander in to the newsroom until noon, and do most of their work in the bar. I have to admit that Thompson’s seductive imagery and sparse prose initially made me yearn for Kemp’s carefree life in the sun.

                But despite Hunter S. Thompson’s well known ‘Gonzo’ trappings, the novel is surprisingly ambivalent about the lifestyle. Kemp arrives in San Juan the worse for wear from drinking on the journey, echoing unpleasant memories I have of arriving in foreign lands both jet lagged and hung over. On more than one occasion, in rare sober moments, he wonders if all the booze might be getting the better of him. Aside from a couple of drinking buddies – Kemp has no real friends in the story – considerable contempt is shown for the other sozzled hacks at the News. Fired journalist Yeamon is ridiculed as messed-up and incompetent, and abusive of his beautiful girlfriend to boot. Masochistic over-drinker and whoremonger Moberg is condemned as ‘disgusting’ and ‘degenerate’. If anything, the author – for surely this is at least a semi-autobiographical work – is saying that hard drinking is only cool if you can handle it and keep your head, as Kemp mostly does, but few others manage.

                From a sociological point of view, the novel depicts a pre-globalisation third-world country on the cusp of being converted into one big resort for American tourists, of whom Kemp is suitably scornful. But at the same time, with this process incomplete, it is currently a playground for Kemp’s type of Westerner. Meanwhile, there are no significant Peurto Rican characters in the story; where they do appear, they are portrayed as violent, impulsive and, in one scene, sexually predatory. In a sense, these elements mark it out as a product of a previous era.

                The plot itself follows the fortunes of Kemp, and by association that of his acquaintances and the newspaper. One major plotline involves Kemp’s stewing lust for the alluring but naive Chenalt, Yeamon’s girlfriend. But in the same vein as the not dissimilar 1950s counterculture classic, On The Road, the plotline of The Rum Diary is less important than the overall atmosphere, the sense of place, that makes it so alluring.

                If you’re anything like me, it’s worth remembering that Kemp’s life – if it ever was indeed possible – certainly isn’t now in our interconnected world, where you need more than the false claim of a connection to The New York Times to make it as a journalist in the tropics. At any rate, in the latter part of the novel the footloose Kemp, who has spent his twenties tramping around the world from job to job, admits to yearning for symbols of stable adulthood, such as his own apartment and a car.

                The Rum Diary is one of those books that, whilst reading it, you find yourself wanting to live it. But, like so many novels, from fantasy to travelogue, it’s always worth simultaneously being realistic about the flaws in the world it portrays. There may be plenty of rum in this novel, but there’s barely a hangover in sight.

R.S. Belcher - The Six Gun Tarot

Published: 2013

I remember, as a teenager, watching the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ of Sergio Leone. Films like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. Excellent movies, many of them, but, hence the nickname, they weren’t shot in the American West at all, but in Italy and Spain. There were times when it was difficult to suspend disbelief that we were seeing an American landscape. Whether it was the whitewashed, anciently Mediterranean-looking buildings or the occasional olive tree, the scenery didn’t quite cut it, didn’t feel ‘right’. So, if the occasional incongruous structure can mar the Old West setting, what happens if you introduce magic, mythology and monsters?

                This is exactly what former reporter and private investigator (could there be a cooler background for a novelist?) R.S. Belcher attempts in his recent debut novel, The Six Gun Tarot. Wild West adventure and apocalyptic fantasy are two very well worn and well established genres, and on the surface at least, make uneasy bedfellows. Any attempt to create a hybrid of the two risks diluting either or both. But The Six Gun Tarot manages it, and the end result is an original, well-paced, fun story that – refreshingly – doesn’t take itself too seriously.

                The story opens with a familiar Western trope:  Jim Negrey, a young man running away from his past, is heading for the Nevada town of Golgotha – if he can survive the inhospitable expanse of the 40-Mile desert. In his pocket he carries the only object that holds any real value to him: his dead father’s old, mysterious glass eye. Once in town, he is fortunate enough to befriend Sheriff Highfather and his deputy, Mutt – both of whom have a few secrets of their own. But Golgotha is no ordinary frontier town. Everyone seems to have their secrets and there are weird goings-on aplenty. Why is Sheriff Highfather so strangely impervious to bullet wounds? What’s the source of the strange poison that killed a local businessman? What’s the true identity of the shadowy saloon owner, Malachi Bick, and why is he so desperate to prevent the re-opening of the abandoned silver mine outside town?

                Jim’s coming-of-age story is only one of the perspectives followed in the novel, which frequently jumps to other characters’ points of view. This is handled well, and keeps the pace up as the tension boils away nicely and the story builds towards its apocalyptic, action-packed finale. The shift in perspective is just as well, as I doubt Jim’s character is strong enough to carry the entire novel. Other characters are as likeable as they are flawed, and it’s one of those books where you find yourself looking forward to the next section involving your favourite character. It’s the characters, as much as the enjoyably irreverent mixing-in of many flavours of myth and theology, which are the strong point of this novel.

                The monsters, when they eventually make an appearance, are a bit of a let-down though; essentially generic zombie-type things (although never referred to as such) heralding the impending doom of all existence. There are some other slightly predictable elements too: Malachi Bick’s true identity is easily guessed, for example. Or there’s Maude, the woman initiated as a child into a sisterhood which teaches her expert fighting skills – who’d have thought she’d have to put them to use?

                It’s possible to make other criticisms too; the writing is a little clunky on occasion, perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who is more used to writing non-fiction. For example, a scene in which Jim tearfully spills out the details of his past crime – the murder of a man who was abusing his mother – is both cringe-worthy and unnecessary. We already know Jim is basically a decent guy with a murky past; leaving the exact nature of the reason that he’s on the run more ambiguous would have been more satisfying.

                These minor nit-picks do not detract from what is, overall a thoroughly enjoyable adventure story. The story forges ahead so confidently that you barely notice. With so much fantasy writing decidedly po-faced, Belcher’s decision to not take this outlandish story too seriously is very welcome. And if you thought the merging of that most gritty and down-to-earth genre of the Western with myth and magic wouldn’t work, think again. In fact, with its philosophy grounded in absolute goods and evils, frontier spirit and survival, in many ways the Old West is the ideal environment to have some fun with these themes. This is what The Six Gun Tarot does best. Apparently, a sequel is already in the works and I know I, for one, will be keeping a look out for it.

P.S. I originally reviewed this book for Many A True Nerd - this website is a must-see for any sci-fi, movie or gaming fan.

Iain (M.) Banks - Consider Phlebas / The Quarry

Consider Phlebas: published 1987

The Quarry: published 2013

Scotland lost two of its best authors in June this year: Iain Banks and his sci-fi alter-ego, Iain ‘M’ Banks. I may have mentioned previously that I’m something of a fan of the Scotsman’s work, but on the whole I have largely, up until now, eschewed his sci-fi offerings - his ‘M’ work, so to speak. I’ve always been sure they’re very good; they come highly recommended by close friends; but sci-fi just isn’t really my cup of tea. This genre-prejudice was unexpectedly challenged, however, with the sudden news of Banks’ diagnosis with terminal cancer. He announced that the novel he was currently working on – The Quarry – looked like it would be his last. Before my pre-ordered copy even arrived, I’d made my decision: with no more ‘mainstream’ Banks novels on the way, if I wanted to continue to enjoy his work, it was time to try his considerable back catalogue of sci-fi novels – authored (at his publisher’s suggestion) by Iain ‘M’ Banks.

                1987’s Consider Phlebas was his first sci-fi offering; his reputation by this point already well established with the dark and compelling non-genre novels The Wasp Factory and The Bridge. The story takes place in a galaxy far, far away (I’m sorry, sci-fi terms really aren’t my strong suit) in the midst of a war between two powerful, ideologically opposed civilisations: the militaristic, religiously motivated Idirans and atheistic artificial-intelligence enthusiasts The Culture. But the main character is a member of neither: Bora Horza Gorbuchal is a ‘Changer’, a humanoid species that can (with a notice period of a day or two) take on the appearance of anyone they like. Currently engaged as a mercenary for the Idirans, he’s motivated by a dislike of the Culture’s godless ways and an assignment to capture a Culture ‘mind’ from a deserted (but still very dangerous) Planet of the Dead. Along the way, he insinuates himself into Kraiklyn’s Free Company, a bunch of space pirates led by a dislikeable egotist.

                Unlike some of the (admittedly very few) other sci-fi novels I have read, Consider Phlebas is instantly enjoyable – to a non-sci-fi fan at least – because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. But there are some intriguing themes here nonetheless. I wasn’t quite sure who I should be rooting for in the war: the Idirans are fundamentally unsympathetic, yet the protagonist prefers them to the anarchistic Culture. The author’s politics are most evident in what we discover about the Culture – a post-scarcity, currency-free socialist utopia – but even they are not portrayed as perfect or even correct. They are just as war-mongering as the Idirans, and justify the expansion of their civilisation in a similar way – albeit without the religion. The Culture crops up, either centrally or peripherally, in a number of later novels, and Consider Phlebas leaves the reader wanting to discover more about them.

                On the downside, Consider Phlebas is a real slab of a book, which wouldn’t be a problem if the length was really necessary – but it isn’t. Horza and the Free Company stop off en-route at various places for reasons which, more often than not, don’t really progress the plot in any way. Presumably with such a fertile imagination it must be tempting to cram everything in to one’s first novel, but the fact that Banks has done so is obvious. There are some enjoyable distractions here – a high-stakes gambling session known as ‘Damage’ is a particular highlight. But much of it could doubtless have waited for future outings. It meanders around the galaxy fairly aimlessly at times, and is in no way as tight and structured as its much-superior follow-up, The Player of Games.

                Where Consider Phlebas is overlong, The Quarry is the opposite: you get the impression that, had the author not discovered he had a terminal illness, the final article would have been significantly more developed. Characters and concepts feel under-cooked and under-explored. As it is, we are presented with little more than the bare bones of a novel, which reads as something like an Iain Banks paint-by-numbers. All the tropes are there: the big reunion (in this instance, a group of former university friends), the big house, the political rants, the liberal sprinkling of drugs and booze. At its centre is the relationship between Kit, an intelligent but mildly autistic young man, and his father Guy. Guy was the ringleader of a bohemian group of creative types at university, but his glory days are well behind him and nowadays he is coughing his way through the final stages of lung cancer, his lifetime of indulgences evidently having caught up with him. The old mates, for their part, have become to varying degrees cynical, yuppified and / or generally unpleasant, with the exception of Kit’s ally, Holly. But, having been dragged back to the tumbledown house in Northumberland, Guy might just have one or two surprises left for them.

                The novel is written from Kit’s point of view, and this is probably the best aspect of the novel: the way that a fifty-something bloke can convincingly get into the head of an eighteen year old with Asperger’s, and sustain the voice for a whole novel. Other aspects, unfortunately, suffer from being underdeveloped. There’s the whole premise of the search for an incriminating videotape, for example, which seems very contrived (no doubt a further draft would have resolved this). There’s also the quarry of the title, a heavy-handed metaphor lurking beyond Guy and Kit’s garden wall and due for expansion once Guy shuffles off his mortal coil, taking his house with it.

                There isn’t much else to say about The Quarry really. It bears many of the hallmarks of what made Banks a great writer, but – for understandable reasons – it does not compare well with many previous works, not least 2012’s Stonemouth. Finally, in what seems like a fairly cruel slice of irony, Banks claims he didn’t find out about his own cancer until he was part way through The Quarry, and the storyline of Guy’s terminal illness well advanced. Makes you wonder if he wished he’d started a novel about winning the lottery, or bedding Miss World or something, instead.

                So, Consider Phlebas and The Quarry: they’re two very different books, with two and a half decades between them, and neither is perfect. Whereas one bears testament to an understandably rushed job, the other is arguably overlong; the product of an up-and-coming author brimming with imagination. Neither, perhaps, is the well-honed, polished piece of work that Banks produced at the high points in his career, like The Crow Road or The Player of Games. But both have their moments, at least, and are memorable in their own ways. With my bookshelves already weighed down with Banks’ back catalogue, shortly to be joined by the rest of his Culture series, I can’t help looking at the gaping hole his departure has left in the British literary world, and wondering when we are ever likely to see someone with the talent to match it.

P.S: check out our political-flavoured tribute to the late Iain Banks over at The Red Train (co-written with Alastair JR Ball)

Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Published: 2012

On first finishing this book, I decided initially that it wasn’t for me. Just not my sort of thing. It was only after a few weeks of reflection that it dawned on me: it’s much worse than that.

                I’ll get to my reasoning for that statement shortly. First, though, it seems only fair to mention some of the positive things people are saying about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Joyce’s first novel. The inner jacket is packed with phrases reminiscent of the reception to David Nicholls’ (similarly insubstantial) One Day. Praise like “this touching and charming novel which made me laugh and sob” (The Express), or “almost unbearably moving” (Sunday Times). Many members of my book group reported similarly, even if not without criticism.

                Gentle, stiff-upper-lip retiree Harold Fry lives with his wife Maureen in rural South-West England. Their marriage is past its sell by date, they’ve forgotten how to talk to each other, and there’s the omnipresent gloomy shadow of their relationship with their estranged (or so you’re led to believe) son. But one morning, a letter arrives from Queenie, a former colleague of Harold’s. They haven’t spoken for years, and now she’s terminally ill in a hospice in far-away Berwick-on-Tweed. Unable to find the words to respond at first, Harold eventually pens a suitably uncomfortable response and tells his wife he is going down the road to post it. But when he reaches the post box, he just keeps walking. And walking. And walking. 627 miles, in fact, all the way to the hospice in Berwick, convinced that, by demonstrating such willpower, Queenie will live.

                If all of this sounds a bit like a Radio Four afternoon play, that’s because it pretty much is: Joyce has written more than twenty of them, as well as other radio and TV work. Not to denigrate Radio Four’s plays; many of them are enjoyably original in concept, much as this novel is. Joyce’s astute understanding of the way people interact with each other in a variety of situations gives life to Harold’s journey.  Along the way, he meets some weird and wonderful characters. In a biting criticism of our celebrity-obsessed, 24-hour media culture, Harold eventually becomes a  cult figure himself, unwittingly collecting a group of hangers-on, other ‘pilgrims’ who want to be a part of his journey for their own reasons.

                In some respects, Joyce handles Harold’s journey well. The most rewarding parts are the first few days, when he is still travelling alone. The later hangers-on are suitably annoying, especially the loathsome Rich Lion, who wants to take over the pilgrimage in order to win back custody of his estranged children. But ultimately, I just couldn’t accept the premise. It may be technically possible for an old man to walk 627 miles in 87 days, but Harold is just about the last person in the world likely to do it.

                It’s possible to accept this whimsical notion – it is fiction, after all, and fiction of a decidedly fable-like quality at that. What I found less easy to accept was the way it dealt with generational issues. The author seems to write off young people (Harold’s son’s generation) as self-centred, self-indulgent drug addicts with no respect for their parents. If only they were more like the moderation-loving, gentle-natured Harold and Maureen! However, it isn’t just the generational politics per se that were the issue for me – although I’m not convinced that outward stoicism and an inability to frankly discuss your feelings are qualities that ought to be extolled. It’s also that, apart from anything else, these qualities seem misplaced in Harold and Maureen. They’re post-war baby boomers, the generation that grew up and came of age in a prolonged period of economic boom and the sexual and social revolutions of the ‘sixties. These are qualities I would associate far more strongly with the older, war-worn generation who would have been Harold and Maureen’s parents.

                The story is also overpoweringly cloying and sentimental in places – I can only imagine how infinitely worse this would have been had the author been American. Finally, the climax involves a distressingly visceral description of terminal cancer which, whilst far less shocking than what you can find elsewhere, jarred severely with the happy-go-lucky tone of the rest of the novel.  

                As I said, I was initially prepared to give this book the benefit of the doubt. But although Joyce thankfully keeps spiritual or religious mumbo-jumbo to a minimum, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry peddles some highly suspect morality lessons indeed. I accept, of course, that it may be that it really is a generational thing – this is an example of the baby-boomer generation growing old and confronting their own demons in a way I just can’t appreciate yet: stale marriages, damaged relationships with their children, and the looming spectre of the Big C. But, even if Joyce did intend Harold Fry to be in any way representative of his generation, I’m sure they can do better than this.

Stephen King - Joyland

Published: 2013

I love Stephen King books. There, I said it. Yes, the literary establishment may be a tad sniffy about mass-market ‘pulp’ genres like horror, but so what? With one or two exceptions, you don’t sell millions of books without being at least vaguely proficient.

                I’ve been reading King for years. At an age when many teenage boys give up reading fiction altogether, it was staying up late and terrifying myself stupid with The Shining and Pet Sematary that kept me going. Later, at university, members of the writers’ group I joined also had King novels sitting alongside more ‘worthy’ tomes on their bookshelves. It’s no different these days; I have a friend who proudly proclaims that she ‘owns everything Stephen King has ever written.’

                Stephen King novels fit into three broad categories: the good early ones (Carrie, It, The Shining etc), the dodgy, cocaine-fuelled ones (The Tommyknockers, Needful Things) and, er, the new ones. His recent record has been patchy yet sporadically brilliant. Attempts at straight horror compare poorly with the classics: Duma Key was boring and Cell idiotic. Yet 11.22.63 (a time travel adventure centred on the Kennedy assassination) demonstrated how he had matured as an author. So basically, his latest novel, Joyland, has a tossed coin’s chances of being a good ‘un.

                Joyland winds back the clock to 1973, which feels like King’s comfort zone; he always seems most comfortable writing about the old, industrial, blue collar America of his youth. Like the teenage King, the first-person narrator, Devin Jones, is an aspiring author and current student, taking various menial jobs to get himself through college. When an opportunity presents itself to spend the summer working at Joyland, a seaside amusement park, it appears preferable to canteen dishwashing as well as a good way to get over his obviously disintegrating relationship with his girlfriend. Devin arrives as a total outsider (‘greenie’) and must quickly integrate himself into the ways, lore and language of the ‘carnies’.

                Joyland is the kind of park which existed in the States before Disney et al managed to completely monopolise the amusement park business – a glorified travelling fairground with all the associated myth and folklore, complete with resident fortune teller. But King doesn’t play the ‘creepy, old fashioned fairground’ card to the extent you’d expect (or in the way he probably would have done earlier in his career). In fact, the only ghost is – unusually – not witnessed by the main character at all, and there are no nail-biting scenes of supernatural tension of the kind that got me hooked on King’s work as a teenager. So, if you’re expecting a horror yarn, this isn’t it.

                The mystery lurking beneath Joyland’s garish facade is the unsolved murder of a female guest in the darkness of the House of Horror ride. But I would argue that this, at least if you’re a seasoned crime fiction reader, won’t satisfy deep down either. Joyland may be published by pulp crime outfit Hard Case Crime, but no real clues are given to help the reader solve the mystery before the killer is revealed. It’s not just that the ability to do so is an integral part of the crime genre; it’s also that most murder mysteries don’t rely so heavily on a psychic child character to help solve the crime.

                OK, so Joyland doesn’t really make the mark as either a horror story or a crime thriller. But I would recommend it for other reasons. Characterisation is now honed to a fine point, a point which most of King’s contemporaries rarely achieve. Dialogue, too, is handled with King’s hallmark panache. Particularly enjoyable was the believable (although apparently mostly made-up) carnie patter and lore – you can immerse yourself in the details of the place. I usually find it difficult to give a damn about the characters in most horror or crime thrillers, but it’s an area in which King is adept at hitting the high notes. In that regard, I wouldn’t rate this as highly as deeply poignant previous works like Different Seasons, or the underrated Hearts In Atlantis, but King is at least keen to show us he still knows what he’s doing.

                Also to recommend it is its length, or lack of. It has to be said that King is prone on occasion to writing some hugely over-long novels (The Stand, anyone?) but this isn’t one of them. It’s straight and to the point, which books like this need to be. It’s a nice easy weekend read.

                As Garth Marenghi, the fictional horror author in the TV parody Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace boasts, ‘I’m one of the few authors who has written more books than most people have read.’ King has by now produced enough novels to fill the capacious trunk of a Plymouth Fury, and not all of them good. But at least Joyland, whilst not up there with the best, is a minor gem.