Getting real about doomed romance

Fiction: A love affair played out in three acts should ideally end in the tragic death of one, or both, of the lovers. And so it usually does, according to the rules of fairytale-like "true romance" as written by career romantics.

British literary journalist Stephanie Merritt has decided to explore this most tried and tested of soap themes, that of doomed romance, but with a hard-edged difference and some anti-literary ambition.

Shakespeare it most definitely is not, but then nor is it Bridget Jones. There is no purple prose, no soaring lyricism, few laughs and little raw invective of the Burchillian variety. No declamatory speeches are despatched. Nor does Merritt's novel echo the more emotionally charged of the 19th-century Italian popular operas. Instead, she has looked to real life in all its squalor and predictability, hoping her snappily efficient turn of phrase and everyday dialogue will lift her narrative somewhat higher than the typical beach read.

Admittedly she makes it difficult. Not only does the narrative open at a pitch dangerously similar to that of lightweight television drama, the very first line sums up the story: "The card lay face up on the table between them, solemn as a writ, pregnant with symbolism." It is as if she is inviting all sceptics to leave now - and there are a dangerous number of moments throughout the first heavily detailed 100 pages or so when the reader could well abandon ship. Most of these irritants are related to the obnoxious central characters, particularly the anti-heroine, aspiring young playwright Sally McGinley, and the bored older, settled man, a near-forgotten actor hoping for a new career courtesy of her new play.

Greg Burns waits at home for a big break, any break. The only diversion on offer is the latest demand of his demanding daughter. All the while, festering away in the background is his resentful partner, Caroline, the woman he lives with, the mother of that same daughter but not his wife. It doesn't matter. Caroline may not be his wife, but she has all the power of an unloved spouse whose security is rooted in her multiple disappointments as well as in the shared property, of which the child is merely another element.

Merritt sets out to present Sally as tough, brittle, chain-smoking, hard- drinking and motorbike-riding. She is 29 and still living the life of a student in a rented room, ready to sleep on any floor.

Of course, she is tough, independent, a loner given to spitting out laconic one- liners, and of course, she assesses the attractively crumpled Greg as more than just a possible cast member and grudgingly knows within minutes of first meeting him during the initial audition "that she was going to sleep with Greg".

So far, so shaky: exactly how obvious is Merritt trying to be? Could her intentions be satirical? Luckily for her, Sally emerges as a misfit scarred by a childhood during which her father stepped out for a few years, while Greg, goodish-looking and a bit pathetic, trapped as he is by a woman he doesn't love and who he considers more as a gaoler than as a companion, is described thus: "Greg Burns, in common with a number of family men of similar age, was the owner of a modest collection of pornography which he kept in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in the room he used as an office, beneath a ring binder labelled 'Tax Assessment: Receipts' and which he had not declared to his common-law wife."

He is 44 and has a lopsided smile. As surely as day follows night, Merritt allows the pair to commence verbal sparring. It is all handled with heavy-handed crudeness. But Greg has a human side. In addition to himself, he also loves his aged father, whereas Sally has never forgiven hers for walking out.

Aside from a chance comment that he would like to visit a second-hand bookshop holding hands with her, Greg does not set out to woo Sally, as she takes most of the initiatives. His main concern is having sex with someone, anyone, as long as it is not shrill, unhappy Caroline, who is insufficiently interested in him.

In the background is a brother-and- sister double-act, the theatrical agents who attempt to protect Sally from herself, while Greg's agent tries to save Greg from Sally - after all, she is clever, nervy and therefore dangerous. The implication is that if she were stupid and less smart-talking, she would be easier to push away.

Developing the character of Greg amounts to chronicling the behaviour patterns of bored middle-aged men anxious for sex without responsibility. "For some years now, more or less since the birth of his daughter, Greg had nursed a small but persistent anxiety that he had not slept with enough women, and that time was running out."

Meanwhile, Sally, in spite of her wary nature, has decided that all she has to do is be sexually inexhaustible and avoid replicating Caroline's territorial recriminations.

All goes well, if non-stop sex and endless bantering text messages amount to a relationship. The narrative tone remains abrasive; these are tough people, and although Sally notes the casualness of Greg's attitude and his determination to keep their relationship a secret, she mistakenly thinks she is in control. As if writing to a formula dictated by the history of such messy events, Merritt continues to pile on the details and the obvious. Once Sally becomes pregnant, the narrative shifts almost as quickly as hypocritical, gutless Greg. Caroline has little difficulty convincing him that Sally, not their miserable relationship, is their enemy.

Published as mainstream literary fiction, this punchy, slick book reads as a cautionary tale burnt through by real-life experience. More stung by the dismissal she feels than by the betrayal of a love neither really expressed, Sally does emerge as a credible individual left with a baby and battling for child support, having had to take a DNA test to prove that Greg is the child's father. Yet the lengthy and deliberate Real, for all its authentic presentation of an all-too- common slice of life as lived, reads as a clinically documented account, in which the abiding injustice, not romance, is the most important element.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times

Real By Stephanie Merritt Faber, 409pp, £10.99