Ambitious, haphazard ninth novel is exercise in disorientation
Kitchenly 434
Ihave been writing book reviews for over 20 years, and for the first time, on finishing Alan Warner’s new and ninth novel, my only thought was: well, I’m flummoxed. The fly-leaf is a good primer for readers, so before getting to page one we know that the narrator is called Crofton Clark, and that he is the steward – or “help” – in an English country house called Kitchenly Mill Race, owned by a rock star called Marko Morrell. We also are told it is set in 1979.
There are pointed period details, such as “Cornish Strawberry Mivvi wrappers and crushed Lilt cans,” but an eerie poetry – “vast, slow tarpaulins of shadow were moved across the fields by pure white cumulus perpetuated above.” As the reader progresses, an image emerges of Crofton. He is somewhat obsessive about the place and narrates – to himself, or to the reader – in a mildly officious, slightly perjink style; meticulously noting the historical and architectural features, tut-tutting about a plaque not being rubbed down with Brasso often enough. But then there are interjections of comedy – will the “four mentally unstable peacocks” be of significance? Or the Magic Roundabout slippers and Mickey Mouse alarm-clock?
The voice veers and slips between registers: fiddlefaddle and finials one minute, “mam” up north the next and some explosive swearing. Every first-person novel is in some ways a challenge to the reader. What can we learn about the narrator? Take, as examples, questions such as how old is Crofton, or what style of hair does he have? We do know that he is a huge admirer of his friend – or is it employer? – Marco, whose mother refers to him as Markus. We know that he reads Mauriac (later on, he will quote Camus) as well as all the music magazines of the day. Then there are the much deeper questions: do we believe a word he says? Is Crofton a wilfully blind progrock version of Stevens in
The Remains Of The Day, or a gentle fantasist like Billy Liar or Reginald Perrin, or something more sinister? Moreover, we know precisely where and when the story unfolds, but when and where is the story being told?
Over the course of the novel we get various misadventures, involving disposing of human excrement with a slotted spoon, detached decorative spheres, the use of hosiery in fixing cars, and how to imprison an accountant or two. In some ways, as comedy, it is very much of its time, with Carry On pratfalls and the occasional leer about underwear. It is all perfectly silly, but that is not a criticism. There is a kind of schadenfreude about comedy where you keep thinking “that is exactly what I expected that pillock to do”.
Kitchenly 434 is an exercise in disorientation. Readers of a certain vintage might remember when one answered the phone giving the location and final three digits. If you can misremember the 1970s, you weren’t there. It has a very oblique relationship with the idea of England. Crofton talks about “merrie England” with a form of posthumous nostalgia – Margaret Thatcher is about to become Prime Minister – and eulogises over the landscape, if not its cleanliness. There is something touchingly sad in the idea that country houses, rectitude and wildflower lanes were always someone else’s fantasy.
Warner’s work has always been intriguing and this, I feel, is his most ambitious and haphazard novel since The Man Who Walks. There is a strange echo of Nabokov, whose novels were similarly unreliable and designed as man-traps of a sort. The voice of Crofton, by turns lyrical, lachrymose and ludicrous, is a peculiar elegy. Flummoxed, yes, but the rose-tinted glasses are both rosy and deceptive in a queasily skilful manner.
This is an edited version of a review which originally appeared in Scotland on Sunday. To read the full version, visit www.scotsman.com/artsand-culture/books