A real break

The Last Weekend By Blake MorrisonChatto Windus, 262pp. £12.99

'THE ONE thing I have learned is this. When people accuse you of harbouring negative feelings – anger, jealousy, malice, resentment – it's they who're feeling them." So says Ian, the narrator of Blake Morrison's gripping new novel, The Last Weekend.

And in a way that one statement is a key to the rest of this dark, literary page-turner, for as well as naming those very emotions that will determine its course, it evokes a deeper sense of duplicity and delusion, a skewed version of events that will have dangerous consequences.

The “last” weekend of the title resonates on different levels – it is the August bank holiday, the last of the British summer, and it will ultimately be the last encounter between two couples with a long shared history. Ian, a primary school teacher in his early 40s, and his wife, Em, a social worker, have been invited to stay at a country house by Ollie and Daisy, Ian’s closest friends from university. It’s supposedly a chance to relax and spend time together, as during their normal lives the couples inhabit vastly different worlds: Ian and Em live a modest, suburban existence in Derbyshire, while Ollie and Daisy lead the kind of gilded London life that their careers as successful barrister and headhunter afford. It should be idyllic – four langourous, hot days – but the competitive edge to the men’s relationship is soon in evidence, and by Friday afternoon they have resurrected a long-forgotten bet, the stakes of which get increasingly high.

Things are further complicated when they are joined by Archie – Ollie and Daisy’s surly teenage son – and Milo, a handsome protégé of Daisy’s, with his two young daughters. As the late summer heat becomes more oppressive with each passing day, so an air of unease and sexual tension settles over the ramshackle, rented farmhouse: Ollie reveals a grim secret to Ian; suspicion is cast on Daisy’s relationship with Milo, and Ian’s own dormant obsession with his best friend’s wife is reawakened.

The Last Weekendis a masterpiece of pacing and revelation – the kind of book you genuinely might read in one sitting – and the main action is split over the four days of the weekend, spliced with significant memories from its narrator's past. Ian's easy, conversational tone draws you in from the very opening and his wry, chatty descriptions at first make him seem like a regular bloke, albeit one with some slightly cynical views and a (seemingly) minor online gambling habit. Soon however – and this is where Morrison's genius for voice really comes into its own – odd remarks, little inconsistencies in memory, and throwaway but nonetheless alarming references hint that there is a lot more to Ian than the Everyman of the Midlands persona he projects.

This growing sense of uncertainty also means that one can never entirely trust his take on other characters. Is Ollie – a classically confident, privileged alpha male – as overbearing as he seems? Is he really suffering from delusions of his own, a liar and a fantasist? And how false is Daisy – is her fawning over Milo no more than the attention of a warm hostess? It’s questions such as these that lend the story a piquant air of unpredictability, one that the author builds up, layer by atmospheric layer.

Morrison is a master of his craft (he is a poet and librettist as well as a writer of prose) and some of his descriptions of landscape are wonderfully lyrical. The physical world he creates seems so real, you can almost feel the heat radiate off the page, see dust motes dancing in the decrepit, sunlit living room. Elsewhere, certain scenes are recorded in McEwan-esque detail: a game of golf, and another of doubles tennis, take on a cinematic intensity. Leaving aside the poetic, there is also a political aspect to the novel. Morrison has always been a faithful chronicler of British society (his book on the Jamie Bulger case, As If, expertly dissected that modern horror story) and a keen observer of human nature, as his celebrated memoirs of his parents proved. Here he combines both skills to great effect, exploring the difficulties faced by British schools (through Ian's role as teacher), racial tension and the ubiquitous divisions of the class system. There are even flashes of wit. After his first encounter with Milo, Ian bitterly observes: "I can't imagine anyone making a better first impression. I hated him on sight".

The greatest achievement of The Last Weekend, however, is Ian himself. He is disturbed and disturbing, a character plagued by demons from his past and the darker reaches of his imagination. His pathological self-delusion and manipulation of those around him are both repellent and compelling (one barely needs the epigraph from Othello at the book's beginning to draw comparisons with a modern-day Iago) and the shocking, violent images that occasionally break to the surface of his consciousness are made all the more sinister by his lucid tone throughout. Right up until the final climactic pages, as the dread builds and a sense of inevitability grows, Morrison keeps us guessing just how far Ian will go. It's a terrifying question.

Catherine Heaney is contributing editor to The Gloss magazine