A dark and Swiftian satire from Boyne -
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LADY Marguerite Blessington from Clonmel wrote the following, a couple of centuries ago: “Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.” The poverty suffered by John Boyne’s anti-hero — if “suffers” could be the right word — is that of conscience. Borrowed thoughts, borrowed stories, borrowed imaginations, borrowed sexuality even, when necessary, are the very stuff of Maurice Swift.
Young Yorkshire lad Swift should have been a plumber like his dad, his mother said. But Maurice had ambitions to be a writer, even if he did lack some inventiveness, although first he had to get out of Yorkshire. He’s a waiter in Berlin when he meets Erich Ackermann. Having slowly built his author reputation, Ackermann has finally won “The Prize”. And, after almost a lifetime of self-imposed celibacy, Ackermann finds himself drawn to Swift like a moth to a flame. Swift will certainly burn him, but Ackermann will only be the first in a long string of victims.
The year is 1988 and Swift, himself, has been writing. He has style, Ackermann observes quietly, but no imagination. His storylines are weak. Swift is aware of this and decides there may be a story he can use, buried somewhere in Ackermann’s past.
Ackermann, having been a half-Jewish member of the Hitler Youth, does indeed have skeletons he’d prefer to keep locked away but Swift is a manipulative companion — not, curiously, lover — and Ackermann is a lonely old man, somewhat grateful of the chance to finally unburden himself. “Everyone has secrets,” Ackermann tells Swift later in Copenhagen.
“There’s something in all our pasts that we wouldn’t want to be revealed. And that’s where you’ll find your story. He must have scribbled that down in his ubiquitous notebook and, when a story began to be revealed to him, he knew exactly what to do with it. I had, quite literally, been the author of my own misfortune.”
Moving swiftly on, Maurice finds himself staying in Gore Vidal’s villa on the Amalfi coast. He has managed to garner the affection of Dash Hardy, a very successful American author and friend of Vidal’s, and both are invited guests.
Maurice’s debut novel Two Germans is about to be published in the US, having been very well-received in the UK. Vidal is requested by Dash to endorse Maurice’s book. By the end of their stay, however, Vidal has the measure of the young author. “I’ve known a lot of whores in my life,” he remarks to Maurice.
“A whore will never cheat you, they have too much integrity for that. But you, Mr Swift, you give the profession a bad name.”
In this “interlude”, as it’s titled (a brilliant satire on the world of publishing), Boyne blends fact and fiction not only to further Maurice’s career within the plot, but to illustrate to the reader just how down and dirty the books world is capable of being.
‘A whore will never cheat you, they have too much integrity’
Throughout the novel, there’s an ominous dread that wraps itself like a fog around its older writers as they continuously look over their shoulder to see which youngster, following them up this ‘ladder to the sky’, will be the Next Big Thing. If you think such a phenomenon only exists in Hollywood, Boyne will persuade you to think again.
Gore Vidal’s villa in Italy was called La Rondinaia — The Swallow’s Nest. Interestingly, Maurice Swift’s second novel, which is not a success by the way, is called The Treehouse. Maurice is getting desperate. And getting married. But that, too, will end in tears. Although not for Maurice…
As a study in the self-rationalising “ethics” of a psychopath, this book is fascinating. As a story, it is horrifically plausible. As another well-deserved success for John Boyne, it’s simply guaranteed.