LITERARY FICTION
LOYALTIES by Delphine de Vigan
(Bloomsbury €15.40) THIS short novel from French bestseller Delphine de Vigan serves up a dark tale of illicit drinking, online abuse and midlife marital despair, arranged as an intercut quartet of name-tagged segments narrated with punch and pace.
Théo, nearly 13, lives part-time with his depressive father, who doesn’t speak to Théo’s mother. With his pal Mathis, who has a cushier home life but whose own parents are barely talking, he’s blotting out his troubles with alcohol. No one but his kindhearted teacher, Hélène, seems to care what’s going on.
While Mathis’s mother Cécile reckons Théo is bad news, she’s distracted by the discovery of her husband’s Jekylland-Hyde internet alter ego after uncrumpling a balled-up piece of paper in his office.
Written in a typically Gallic tradition of lid-lifting on cosy middle-class mores, it’s pretty squalid stuff. Yet you’re kept reading helplessly to the desperate cliffhanger finish, fingers crossed that Théo can be saved.
THE DAKOTA WINTERS by Tom Barbash
(Doubleday €13.65) SET in New York on the cusp of the Reagan era, this debut follows Anton, the son of Buddy, a talkshow host trying to rebuild his career after an on-set breakdown.
As his unofficial producer, Anton is a sounding board for Buddy’s material, and a source of reassurance.
But Anton, fresh from a stint with the Peace Corps in Africa, where he got malaria, wonders if he should make his own way in the world.
For the most part this is an amiable coming-of-age novel, in which the warm glow of father-son companionship is tinged with rivalry.
But starstruck digressions about the era’s celebrities derail the story somewhat. Anton spends a lot of time in particular with John Lennon, hoping to bag him as a guest on Buddy’s comeback show.
While these scenes give glitz and glamour, they feel sorely contrived — the one blot on an otherwise enjoyable novel in need of a trim.
THE GUNNERS by Rebecca Kauffman
(Serpent’s Tail €15.65) THIS US debut of family secrets and lies centres on six friends — three men, three women — who, having met in childhood while playing in an abandoned house in upstate New York, come together two decades later to mark the death of one of the group, Sally.
Starting with six-year-old Mikey, shown hiding the loss of sight in his left eye from his oppressive martinet father, the book alternates between the group’s schooldays and their reunion as thirtysomethings. Moments of high tension — involving closeted sexuality, unrequited love and hidden parentage — erupt from a narrative that wrongfoots you with its careful pace, generating quiet emotional clout from a three-dimensional cast.
Mikey’s story is perhaps the most moving, with the longest delayed revelation shedding new light on the opening scene of his tough upbringing. But it’s all a little too leisurely — you could imagine the story properly taking flight as an adaptation, with charismatic performers.