My Weekly Book

The Gardens of the Dead – William Brodrick

I thought this book was going to be responsible for me having the following horrible experience: an author whose first novel you devour and whose second you keenly look forward to, writes something that you snap up as soon as it comes out in paperback. And which leaves you feeling gravely disappointed upon reading. I really did think that The Sixth Lamentation was one of the best things that I had come across during 2006 and recommended it to all comers. And, while I found myself eventually impressed by the direction this follow-up story took, I simply didn’t feel anything like as positive about it. Now I have finally finished it I am marginally more encouraged – the plot was indeed as twisty and turny as the various cover blurbs and reviews promised and did have me exclaiming aloud in places. But I feel people who loved the action and the big historical sweep of Brodrick’s first novel may not have much stomach for this misty, impressionistic tale, and may well have given up long before they come to the meat of it. I was nearly among them myself.

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The story is about a set of relationships and about the past, as well as being an almost theological disquisition on the nature of memory and truth. Father Anselm, the barrister-turned-monk who is this series’ major protagonist, is forced to confront his past actions through a plot conceit that is, frankly, best regarded honestly as such and not examined for verisimilitude. We learn (extremely gradually) how he took certain actions during a trial – he did his job, in fact, as a junior barrister cross-examining a witness – and those actions had unforeseen consequences, as actions tend to do. We are presented with a set of people who seem to be related to each other in a particular way – through a criminal trial, as witnessed by Anselm. By the time this novel has wound its way along a particularly circuitous set of paths to its conclusion we discover how the truth about this relationship is quite different from what we (and Anselm himself) might initially have been led to believe. There’s a good story in here somewhere but trying to keep track of it was a severe test, one compounded by the multi-character viewpoint that left you endlessly trying to work out who knew what and at which point, never mind whose account could be relied upon. This meant that picking it up and ploughing on became a duty, rather than a pleasure, before the narrative paths started to converge in preparation for the ending and the whole thing became readable again.

A lot of my problems with this tale may have been caused by the fact that its author, a former monk turned barrister, may well intend it as an extended Christian allegory on the lines of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I can honestly say that I am not sure how well this sits with a thriller plot and perhaps it is this contradiction that has led to the invention of the rather strained term ‘philosophical thriller’ coined on the cover. In fact, reading various interviews with the author in preparation for writing this review have left me feeling more frustrated with him than otherwise. There is the inversion of his own life history that provides his hero with his unique selling point. Fair enough, as far as it goes. But then there’s the half-French ancestry that Anselm seemingly arbitrarily acquires, the time spent working with the homeless - the parallels between his own experiences and the content of his novels is starting to come across more as writing for therapy or as a kind of compulsion than writing for fun and profit.

I know that all authors draw extensively on their own lives and experiences – but there is a line. And when it is crossed, as Douglas Coupland’s readers could tell you, it is just uncomfortable – a bit like watching the tired and emotional celebrity who breaks down on the television chat show. And I’m not yet sure, after two books, where exactly Brodrick stands in relation to that line, whether he is on the right side of it or not. I fear he is not. As I said on reading his first book, it is very easy to see how he found a publisher, as his voice is so original, witty and amusing. But I’m simply not so sure, on the strength of this showing, that I’ll be as keen to buy book number three as I was book number two. Damn and blast it.

Some links:

• William Brodrick: an interview
• Tangled Web Books: William Brodrick Q&A
• Wikipedia: The Pilgrim’s Progress

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 2:14 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.