Shabby chic lit
February 5, 2006 | 12:00am
An Evening Of Long Goodbyes
by Paul Murray
Random House Quality Paperback,
440 pages
Available at Powerbooks
Sometimes, it just can’t be helped, and we have to rave about a book whose first half is just so well-written and hilarious that you half-expect the sum of its parts will falter in maintaining that high standard. Young Irish novelist Paul Murray has produced such a book with his debut novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes. I recommend the novel wholeheartedly because a first half so deliciously sly, satirical, and politically incorrect, while being urbane and pithy, has to be read and to be enjoyed. To describe it one way, think PG Wodehouse meets Nick Hornby, channeling Noel Coward, and creating a novel for this 21st century.
The first half of the book is a pure, modern, drawing room comedy, with protagonist Charles Hythloday, coming across as some contemporary Bertie Wooster. Having recently lost his father, a cosmetics magnate, Charles lives in the family mansion outside Dublin with his sister Christabel. Mother is off at the luxury rest farm due to drug-related health and "wellness of mind" problems. A layabout by profession, Charles is that typical upper class twit, suspicious of anything foreign and prejudiced to his very blood platelets. Obsessed with 1950s and ’60s cinema, he idolizes the actress Gene Tierney, and falls in love (or thinks he does) with a girl named Laura – even if the match is made in hell, he blindly sees her as his dream girl purely on the strength of her carrying the name of Gene’s most noted film role. The plotline is simple: when Charles and Christabel discover that estate taxes and their father’s dissipating fortune will leave them facing a drastic lifestyle change, Charles is forced to do the unthinkable, and work for the first time in his life. The second half of the book then shifts to post-industrial commentary as we follow the futile and tragi-comic efforts of Charles to gain meaningful employment.
Beyond this simple plot, it’s the fully realized characters that make this novel such a joy to immerse oneself into. Charles is at once the center of our affections. He seeks physical perfection in others, thinks his reason for being is to achieve perfect sprezzatura – the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. To this end, he declares himself allergic to work, and is ready to criticize any of Christabel’s suitors. It’s his bon mots and acerbic observations that had me laughing aloud.
Of one such suitor, he exclaims (and you can imagine this being said with disdain and the one arched eyebrow): "His head, however, was what really fascinated me. It resembled some novice potter’s first attempt at a soup tureen, bulbous and pasty, with one beetling eyebrow, a stubbly jaw, and less than the full complement of teeth; to describe his ears as asymmetrical would be to do asymmetry a disservice."
When Charles introduces us to the help at the family mansion, he reveals that they are refugees from Eastern Europe, fleeing the conflicts that ensued between Russia and these Balkan states, "As I always say to Bel, if there’s one good thing to come out of all this fuss in the Balkans, it’s the availability of quality staff."
When forced to do his share of the nine-to-five life, Charles’ less than eminent qualifications have him ending up at a bread factory. Caught in the yule time preparations, he’s assigned to the production line of the marzipan yule logs that he describes as having the shelf life of plutonium. With more education than the average workforce grunt, he thrusts himself as champion of the downtrodden and masses, only to find that in the real world and its pecking order of street smarts, he’s still bottom of the totem pole. Of his foray into the world of the gainfully employed, Charles succinctly remarks, "The whole thing had been a debacle from start to finish, and it struck me that if one tenth of this had happened to Christ during his last supper, it was debatable whether he would have bothered coming back from the dead."
An Evening of Long Goodbyes was a finalist for last year’s Whitbread First Novel Award. If you are looking for a righteous send-up of upper-class vacuity, this novel delivers and more. To its eternal credit, it does not stay complacent with being wonderfully satirical, and attempts to move into a terrain, where albeit less successful, the novelist shows his awareness that he has to bring more to the table than just being clever and biting. There are life’s lessons underneath the hilarity – one being that life’s true riches have nothing to do with one’s surroundings and accoutrements, but with the family, friends and people that one meaningfully connects with, and surrounds oneself with. That the second half of the book does not enchant us as much as the first half says more about just how engaging the first half is than that the second half turns the novel into a mere qualified success.
by Paul Murray
Random House Quality Paperback,
440 pages
Available at Powerbooks
Sometimes, it just can’t be helped, and we have to rave about a book whose first half is just so well-written and hilarious that you half-expect the sum of its parts will falter in maintaining that high standard. Young Irish novelist Paul Murray has produced such a book with his debut novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes. I recommend the novel wholeheartedly because a first half so deliciously sly, satirical, and politically incorrect, while being urbane and pithy, has to be read and to be enjoyed. To describe it one way, think PG Wodehouse meets Nick Hornby, channeling Noel Coward, and creating a novel for this 21st century.
The first half of the book is a pure, modern, drawing room comedy, with protagonist Charles Hythloday, coming across as some contemporary Bertie Wooster. Having recently lost his father, a cosmetics magnate, Charles lives in the family mansion outside Dublin with his sister Christabel. Mother is off at the luxury rest farm due to drug-related health and "wellness of mind" problems. A layabout by profession, Charles is that typical upper class twit, suspicious of anything foreign and prejudiced to his very blood platelets. Obsessed with 1950s and ’60s cinema, he idolizes the actress Gene Tierney, and falls in love (or thinks he does) with a girl named Laura – even if the match is made in hell, he blindly sees her as his dream girl purely on the strength of her carrying the name of Gene’s most noted film role. The plotline is simple: when Charles and Christabel discover that estate taxes and their father’s dissipating fortune will leave them facing a drastic lifestyle change, Charles is forced to do the unthinkable, and work for the first time in his life. The second half of the book then shifts to post-industrial commentary as we follow the futile and tragi-comic efforts of Charles to gain meaningful employment.
Beyond this simple plot, it’s the fully realized characters that make this novel such a joy to immerse oneself into. Charles is at once the center of our affections. He seeks physical perfection in others, thinks his reason for being is to achieve perfect sprezzatura – the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. To this end, he declares himself allergic to work, and is ready to criticize any of Christabel’s suitors. It’s his bon mots and acerbic observations that had me laughing aloud.
Of one such suitor, he exclaims (and you can imagine this being said with disdain and the one arched eyebrow): "His head, however, was what really fascinated me. It resembled some novice potter’s first attempt at a soup tureen, bulbous and pasty, with one beetling eyebrow, a stubbly jaw, and less than the full complement of teeth; to describe his ears as asymmetrical would be to do asymmetry a disservice."
When Charles introduces us to the help at the family mansion, he reveals that they are refugees from Eastern Europe, fleeing the conflicts that ensued between Russia and these Balkan states, "As I always say to Bel, if there’s one good thing to come out of all this fuss in the Balkans, it’s the availability of quality staff."
When forced to do his share of the nine-to-five life, Charles’ less than eminent qualifications have him ending up at a bread factory. Caught in the yule time preparations, he’s assigned to the production line of the marzipan yule logs that he describes as having the shelf life of plutonium. With more education than the average workforce grunt, he thrusts himself as champion of the downtrodden and masses, only to find that in the real world and its pecking order of street smarts, he’s still bottom of the totem pole. Of his foray into the world of the gainfully employed, Charles succinctly remarks, "The whole thing had been a debacle from start to finish, and it struck me that if one tenth of this had happened to Christ during his last supper, it was debatable whether he would have bothered coming back from the dead."
An Evening of Long Goodbyes was a finalist for last year’s Whitbread First Novel Award. If you are looking for a righteous send-up of upper-class vacuity, this novel delivers and more. To its eternal credit, it does not stay complacent with being wonderfully satirical, and attempts to move into a terrain, where albeit less successful, the novelist shows his awareness that he has to bring more to the table than just being clever and biting. There are life’s lessons underneath the hilarity – one being that life’s true riches have nothing to do with one’s surroundings and accoutrements, but with the family, friends and people that one meaningfully connects with, and surrounds oneself with. That the second half of the book does not enchant us as much as the first half says more about just how engaging the first half is than that the second half turns the novel into a mere qualified success.
BrandSpace Articles
<
>