When I was younger, I taught creative writing courses in universities, cheerfully tolerating my students’ stylistic eccentricities, such as employing silly fonts, playing with page layout, or spurning punctuation. Now, in cantankerous middle-age, I’ve grown less accepting of anything that pulls me out of the fiction and reminds me that I’m reading a novel, not because I object to inventiveness per se, but because I’m not always convinced that it serves any purpose other than drawing attention to itself.
I have previously complained in these pages about characters identified only by an initial. Bryan Washington adds a new charge in Palaver, where his protagonists are defined by familial relationship, as in “the mother” and “the son”. Why, I ask myself, would a novelist choose to employ this conceit across 300 pages, other than to persuade the reader that in concealment lies high art? The mother did this; the son did this; the mother said this; the son said this. The reader rolled his eyes. As André Aciman might say, call me by my name.
Palaver is set in Tokyo during the mother’s visit to the son after a lengthy period apart. Having failed to answer his phone one day, she books a flight from Canada to Japan to make sure the poor lamb is still alive and kicking, which is infuriating for him because, while she’s sleeping in his bed, he’s condemned to the pull-out sofa and can’t bring his hook-ups home. Honestly, if my mother arrived at my front door every time I failed to answer a call, it would keep Dublin Bus in profit for years.
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The son lives a disconnected existence, teaching English to clients who meet him in coffee shops and complain when his mind isn’t on the job. He’s in a purely physical relationship with a married man because Literary Law #1 states that gays in novels can only be defined by their sexual urges, meeting up in “love hotels” for energetic but unfulfilling sex. (Literary Law #2 states that novel sex must feel like a chore, unlike its real-life counterpart, which is generally quite good fun.)
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He has a cat that spends all its time cleaning its paws, an incarcerated brother to whom he considers writing letters but doesn’t, and is meticulous about keeping his apartment tidy, a passion that isn’t helped by the arrival of his unwelcome flatmate. And he eats a lot of rice. Because, you know, Japan.
Initially, being in a country where she not only doesn’t speak the language but can’t even decipher the alphabet leaves the mother feeling discombobulated. However, she has a spark about her that somehow didn’t travel down the bloodline and is happy to venture on to the streets, trusting that if she gets lost, she’ll figure things out and make it home sooner or later.
She forms a friendship with a coffee shop owner, Ben, who’s drawn to her, and allows a hint of romance into her world. She’s not on holiday exactly, but one feels that if she could just shake off her wretched offspring, she’d be living her best life. “Can’t we spend time together?”, she asks repeatedly, “I’ve flown halfway across the world to be with you”.
But like a recalcitrant teenager he tells her that he’ll be out every night and not to ask where, or with whom, or what he’s doing. He’s only one breath away from pointing out that he didn’t ask to be born, and it doesn’t take long before she makes the sensible decision to board trains, exit at random stations and have adventures.
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Scattered throughout are photographs of Tokyo. I have no idea why. They’re poorly framed, contain nothing of interest and ignore both its beauty and history. It’s possible the author, who lives there, wants to discourage visitors to an already crowded city.
I’ve read Washington before and liked his debut collection of stories, Lot, but like so many young writers, he is so focused on pointing out how miserable life is that he fails to identify any of its joys. Thankfully, the mother brings some much-needed energy to Palaver; otherwise, we’d be stuck with the interminable whining of an entitled man-child.
Should I ever find myself teaching writing courses again, I’ll add one simple piece of advice to my students to help improve their work: lighten up.
John Boyne’s latest novel is Elements
