FICTION: Big Parts, by Shane Cunningham, Muswell Press reviewed by LIAM HARTE
THE GAP that separates Shane Connaughton's third novel from its predecessors is more than just a temporal one. In both A Border Station(1989) and The Run of the Country(1991) Connaughton skilfully mined his Cavan upbringing for stories that revolved around generational conflict, sectarian bigotry and doomed emotional attachment. Both works are very much of their time and place: pre-peace process fictions preoccupied with different kinds of border-crossing, though neither offers much hope of reconciliation across the political divide. As the domineering father in The Run of the Countrybleakly proclaims: "As long as that Border's there fools' blood is all you'll get in this country. If they wanted peace they wouldn't put a border up, would they?"
Big Partsdeparts completely from this geographical and thematic territory, being set in a crumbling rented house in a London street inhabited by a cast of oddities. These include such freakish creations as Sir Neville Earthy, "the full Anglo-Saxon shilling", and Filfy Wilfy, "the human skunk".
Freddie Parts is the most extravagantly drawn of these eccentrics, an indefatigable octogenarian “with a leer for every year and a sexual sneer to demean a Mayfair tart”. It is he who catches the louche narrator and his wife cavorting on the kitchen table in the opening scene, when he calls with news of their imminent “decanting” by the landlords. From this point onwards, the tenants’ collective attempt to resist eviction provides a paper-thin pretext for the many farcical and preposterous episodes that follow in this relentlessly unfunny comic novel.
As an aspiring writer, Freddie persuades the narrator – who changes his name more often than his clothes – to act as his unpaid agent for his play, Fanny by Gaslight, and novel, Hare's Rural Rides. The former is a "horny melodrama" featuring characters called Lord Crotch and Lady Gusset; the latter, a bawdy romp based on the exploits of a priapic estate agent. When neither work finds a publisher, Freddie embarks on another madcap venture, this time involving a choreographed water show, which he hopes will interest television producers. Again, he enlists the help of the narrator, who is all the while secretly recording his experiences on a tape recorder, for reasons that are never made entirely clear. Soon, the narrator's wife begins to resent her husband's involvement with this asinine old buffoon, and so their relationship becomes as rickety as the ramshackle house they live in.
Big Partssignally fails to live up to its publishers' billing as "a genuinely comic novel of character and language". Many of the book's basic elements – the exaggerated character traits, the absurd situations, the improbable turn of events – encourage us to read it as farce, but there are few belly-laughs here. All too often, the novel's attempts at humour descend into puerile slapstick and crude banter, just as the repartee between the characters frequently dwindles to crass nonsense. Wisecracks and one-liners abound, yet few rise above the level of juvenile wordplay. When, for example, the narrator tells his wife: "I adore you", she replies: "I window you", and when Freddie says of his young lover: "How could I leave her behind?", the narrator quips: "A nice behind isn't easy to leave".
Elsewhere, Connaughton’s well-tuned ear for the colloquial rhythms of Cockney speech adds depth and colour to the minor characters, yet none of his central protagonists come across as credible people, not even within the terms of the contrived set-pieces he fashions for them. Their actions are drained of meaningful resonance and their reasons and motivations are impossible to fathom. Of course, it may be that we are not meant to look for psychological depth here, but rather revel in the novel’s madcap action and its scorn for political correctness. But is a modern reader really meant to be amused by Freddie’s fetish for cross-dressing, or find the contrast between the narrator’s sexual worship of his wife and his surreptitious ogling of other women funny?
Such unsubtle, sexist scenarios are more worthy of a 1970s Benny Hill skit than a 2009 novel. For this reader at least, Big Partsprovoked more embarrassed squirms than smiles.
- Big Parts, by Shane Cunningham, Muswell Press, 239pp, £9.99
Liam Harte teaches Irish and modern literature at the University of Manchester. His latest book, The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001, has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan