Sad echoes
To
say this is my most long-awaited book of the year would be an
exaggeration - that’ll be Adam Mars-Jones’s Pilcrow,
15 years in the coming - but it’s certainly my most eagerly
awaited. I’ve been reading and relishing Patrick McGrath’s
novels since 1993’s Dr Haggard’s Disease,
and each new book since then has been a source of untrammelled
delight (the disappointing Martha Peake [2000] being
the exception that etc). So it was inevitable that I wouldn’t
wait for publication if I could possibly help it.
Admirers of McGrath’s work know what to expect
from Trauma: an unreliable first person narrative with
aspects of mental illness and sexual obsession. In this he delivers,
and indeed some elements of the book are so familiar - the art
world from Port Mungo (2004), psychiatrists from Asylum
(1996) and the story ‘Ground Zero’ from Ghost
Town (2005) - that on a reading of the blurb it might seem
that McGrath is simply going through his hoops; or at least mopping
up unused research. Also there is an inherent danger in having
a trademark style where there is, if not a twist or revelation
near the end, then a reversal in understanding by the reader:
when this is anticipated, how does the author stay one step ahead?
McGrath has no hesitation in doling out juicy titbits
literally from the beginning. Trauma begins:
My mother’s first depressive illness
occurred when I was seven years old, and I felt it was my fault.
This is the voice of Charlie Weir, psychiatrist
based in New York City. (McGrath’s first four novels were
set in England; with his next two he combined Britain with his
adopted home of the USA; with Trauma he has crossed the
Atlantic completely.) McGrath knows the attuned reader will be
awaiting ‘clues’ to the truth of Charlie’s world,
and offers them up freely:
In those days we lived in shabby discomfort
in a large apartment on West Eighty-Seventh Street, where my
brother lives with his family today. I never contested Walt’s
right to have it after Mom died, and have come to terms with
the fact that she left me nothing. Indeed, it amuses me that
she would throw this one last insult in my face from beyond
the grave. It was more appropriate that Walt should have the
apartment, given the size of his family, and me living alone,
although Walt didn’t actually need the apartment. Walt
was a wealthy man - Walter Weir, the painter? But I don’t
resent this, although having said that, or rather, had I heard
one of my patients say it, I would at once detect the anger
behind the words. With consummate skill I would then extricate
the truth, bring it up to the surface where we could both face
it square: You hated your mother! You hate her still!
But Charlie loves his mother, he assures us, and
looks after her when she’s alone (”Ah, Charlie. Always
trying to help people who don’t want it”); it’s
his father he can’t stand (referring to him as ‘Fred’
while mom remains ‘Mom’). Fred walked out on the family,
Mom became a depressive, a drinker, and worst of all a novelist.
I was comforted by the sound of the typewriter.
If she was typing then she wasn’t crying, although later
she was able to do both at once.
This is a book of contradictions. We feel we know
what Charlie thinks - he thinks he knows what he feels - yet we
can’t resist hunting down meaning in every aside (”Mine
is a profession that might appear on the surface to suit the passive
personality. But don’t be too quick to assume we’re
uninterested in power”). It has a complex time scheme and
multiple well-detailed characters, but has the unity and force
of a short story.
The subject matter is families, and McGrath concentrates
on “irregular” relationships within the home and how
they reach out into our lives to create a spiderweb of dysfunction.
Charlie broke up with his wife, Agnes, after her brother died;
they got back together when his mother died. Like many of McGrath’s
protagonists, he has an unhealthy interest in detailing the rise
and fall of his, well, you know (”With stiffening penis
I rose to greet her…”). All the decisions that Charlie
makes, even when they’re hardly decisions at all, seem to
make perfect sense, showing how well McGrath weaves us into his
doubtful reasoning. All through there are suggestions that we
might not be seeing the whole truth:
This falsification of memory - the adjustment,
abbreviation, invention, even omission of experience - is common
to us all, it is the business of psychic life, and I was never
seriously upset about it. I know how very fickle the human mind
is, and how malleable, when it has to accommodate belief, or
deny the intolerable.
The story does lead to a dramatic conclusion - perhaps
more obviously (dare one say cinematically?) dramatic than any
of McGrath’s earlier novels - which at first seems too clear
cut and suddenly obvious. On further reflection, the reader realises
that there are layers to unpeel yet - does the book have more
in common with Port Mungo than just the painterly details?
- and an early revisit to this expertly told tale will not go
amiss.
John Self
To read more of John Self's book reviews, check
out his blog at
The Asylum.
