Category: Headline Review

Fiction – hardcover; Headline Review; 160 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Jennifer Johnston does a nice line in slightly kooky characters, and her latest novel, to be published on November 16, is no exception. Desmond Fitzmaurice, one of two main characters in Truth or Fiction, is a doddery old writer who’s fallen into obscurity. He lives a rather privileged existence in a house on the Dublin waterfront, where he is waited on hand and foot by his second wife, the dour-faced Anna. For all intents and purposes he seems to be a gentle old soul prone to sentimentality and a hankering for times gone by.

But then London-based journalist, Caroline Wallace, enters his rather mundane world and this version of a polite, well-mannered chap nearing the end of his life, gets turned, ever so slowly, on its head. Caroline, who’s been dispatched to interview him on the eve of his 90th birthday, isn’t entirely sure what to expect. When she arrives the first thing she does is tell Desmond that:

“My editor asked me to come and interview you. She would like to bring you back to life again. She feels your work is too important to be let fade away, as it has. She would like me to reassess your work and also to do a feature on your lifestyle. How you live, how you have lived, the interlocking of your life and work.”

Desmond is not entirely enamoured with the intrusion:

“You wish to take the unimportant garbage of my life and stir it in with the important, with my work. You wish to make me intelligible to the masses. I never wrote for the masses to read.”

And yet, there’s something about this new-found attention that wins Desmond over. Before long he is introducing Caroline to the important people in his life and confessing a succession of sordid events. But how much of what he tells her is truth, and how much of it is fiction?

The beauty of this novel, Johnston’s 16th, is not so much her typical restrained and unpretentious prose style, nor the fast-moving narrative that largely comprises dialogue, but her very human characters with their flaws and foibles. That Caroline arrives in Dublin reeling from a marriage proposal made by her partner of 10 years adds an extra layer to the story, for how much of her anger is affecting her opinion of Desmond? And why is she so angry in the first place?

Once again Johnston has delivered an entertaining and effortless read, one that can quite comfortably be read in an hour or two. It’s a welcome return to form after her slightly disappointing Foolish Mortals; I only wish I hadn’t raced through it so quickly, because it could be a long wait for her next one.

Fiction – paperback; Headline Review; 312 pages; 2007.

If I had my wits about me I’d be reading Jennifer Johnston’s back catalog in the order in which the books were written, so that I could appreciate her development as a writer. However, I’m not that well organised, and when I saw Foolish Mortals in Waterstone’s the other day, while I was doing some last-minute Christmas gift buying, I snapped this one up for myself.

This morning, curled up in bed, I read it cover to cover and, not for the first time, wished my rating system featured half-stars. If it did, I’d probably award Foolish Mortals — Johnston’s most recent novel — three-and-a-half stars: it’s not one of Johnston’s best, although it is by far her most accessible novel. The literary flourishes that characterise most of her books (or the ones that I’ve read so far) are not here, save for one character — Henry — telling his side of the story in the first person, while the rest of the story is narrated in the third person.

The book opens with Henry lying in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. We later learn that he’s been involved in a serious car accident in which his wife, Charlotte — the driver — was killed. Save for a lot of broken bones, he’s quite okay but his memory has been shot and it takes time for him to piece the past together.

So here I sit in this hospital room broken in pieces and little by little the past is revealing itself to me. Things I want to know and things that might be better left unremembered. How great it would be if you could only remember the good bits, the noble thoughts, the generosity, all the bits we hope for ourselves. Dreams, prayers, discard the blackness, let all the muck slide away.

Henry’s amnesia is a great device for Johnston to throw in the “reveals” that normally irritate the hell out of me — see my review of Andrew Sean Greer’s The Story of a Marriage for my thoughts on that particular literary device — but in this context they’re appropriate and don’t seem as if the author is using them to show off.

Unfortunately, because the narrative relies on the unveiling of so many “secrets” to work it means I can’t say much more about the storyline without ruining the plot for everyone else. But without giving anything away, Foolish Mortals is about the coming together of a dysfunctional family — Henry’s Canada-based brother, his first wife Stephanie, his almost-grown children and his 80-something mother, the rather gloriously eccentric Tash — with the car accident as a catalyst and everything climaxing with a wonderful Christmas dinner.

It’s delightfully kooky in places, although it never strays into outlandishness. The rambling family nature of the story does bring other authors to mind — Anne Tyler, Anita Shreve and, dare I say it, Maeve Binchy — but it still retains that distinctly Jennifer Jonhston feel with its economical use of language, its strong female characterisation and its deft analysis of ordinary human life.

It was also refreshing to read a book by this writer set in New Ireland (as one of the characters dubs it) instead of some undefined period in history. I enjoyed it as a piece of literary “fluff” but if you’re looking for a serious introduction to Johnston’s work, this is probably not the place to start.

Fiction – paperback; Headline Review; 232 pages; 1999.

Two Moons is another startling novel by Jennifer Johnston, who  writes in a crisp, clear style reminiscent of so many of her Irish counterparts.

A kind of cross between Colm Toibin’s The Blackwater Lightship and Salley Vickers’ Instances of the Number 3, this book is part comedy and part family drama, but has an element of spiritual “fantasy” that gives it an unusual twist — although some readers may find it too “inventive” for their liking.

Essentially it is a story about three generations of women, two of whom live together — Mimi, the elderly grandmother, and her daughter, the stage actress Grace — in a house overlooking Dublin Bay.

As Grace readies herself for an upcoming role in Hamlet, the family equilibrium is thrown off-kilter by two major events: the appearance of an angel, who can only be viewed by Mimi, and a surprise weekend visit by Polly, Grace’s London-based daughter, whose new boyfriend leaves a lasting impression that lingers long after he leaves.

To say any more would spoil the plot of the book. But it has a raw emotional urgency coupled with a few  unexpected “kinks” in the storyline that kept me turning the pages. The characters — especially Mimi — are very well drawn, and Johnston’s writing is taut but sophisticated: she knows how to move a scene along using crisp dialogue, few details and little else.

My only quibble is the overuse of the moon motif — the Two Moons title comes from the reflection of the moon in the ocean — and the fact that pretty much every scene depicted involves wine — whether pouring, drinking or spilling it — which began to wear very thin very quickly.

On the whole, Two Moons is a bittersweet story about love, betrayal and growing old while trying to come to terms with disappointments of the past. It’s a quick read with a kind of fairy-tale twist — wonderful, if you like that sort of thing.