Truth in fiction
Michael Nath’s taut exploration of a racist murder is the work of a writer who should be more widely known, writes Sarah Hughes
There are those who, picking through Michael Nath’s densely written story of racism, revenge, love and betrayal, will find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer vigour with which the cacophonous tale is told.
Those who love this book, however, will love it wholeheartedly, surrendering to Nath’s chaotic rhythms and enjoying the way in which the various fragmented pieces gradually coalesce into a coherent whole.
At the story’s heart sits Hanley, a lawyer on a mission with a longago case of a young black man killed by a group of white boys, who got away with it because they were “connected.”
If that all sounds a lot like the murder of Stephen Lawrence, then it’s meant to, but Nath’s interest does not lie in recreating true crime. Instead, we are deep in occult history territory
here. Like David Peace’s mesmerising alternative account of the Miners’ Strike, GB84, it is not so much a story of what did happen as a story of how it might have all gone down.
Nath introduces us to a crew of chancers, conmen and foul-mouthed comedians, bent cops and corrupt councilmen, rent boys and reporters, slick lawyers and self-interested politicians, double-dealers and triplecrossers, men of (dis)honour all.
It is a world riven with distrust and unease, as Nath makes clear when Carl, a disgraced journalist investigating a group seeking revenge on the murderers, visits the White Cross pub in south-east London. “The White Cross wasn’t flash hard. No one on the door; no stand-out musclemen with tans, lieutenants, babes, thick bling. There were middle-aged tradesmen in Timberland boots, black combat boots, tucking in joggers, one of them cuffing Jonas; others held their pints at a ‘Thursday’ angle as they heard an Albanian scam… when you’ve history like this place, you don’t want it stirred.”
If it is a milieu that Nath appears to understand well, that is perhaps because he is one of those authors who, like his characters, appears to exist in the margins. A senior lecturer
in modernism and creative writing at the University of Westminster, he is the author of two previous novels, the first of which, La Rochelle, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His writing is addictive, sometimes strange, often beautiful and, as The
Treatment makes clear, deserves to be better known.
Nath’s rich, image-laden paragraphs circle back in on themselves, much as Carl circles the story, convinced he is on the right track even as we realise that his more astute wife, Karen, has a far clearer perspective of what is happening.
As to what that is – well, that would be telling. Suffice to say that Nath, a tighter writer than might at first be apparent, keeps the tension building until the final pages. When the end does come, it is as righteous and blood-soaked as the revenge tragedies this mad and marvellous book so cleverly updates.