And if style is indeed the essence of the best writing, this book aims for the heights. The story ends on the London Eye, a “glorious spray of radiuses,” where at sunset “Phoebus is up to his oldest and best tricks.” Phrases such as “existentialist gunslingers” abound, while the oddity of much of New York is everywhere displayed. Of Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, O’Neill comments: “If a troupe of Mongolian horsemen had appeared in the distance I would not have been shocked.”
Nostalgia, comedy and melancholy mix in this novel, as in the work of many stylists — Evelyn Waugh and the less consistent John Banville come to mind. As for the book’s doubling-back, episodic structure, this may be a way of incorporating a range of personal memories. O’Neill, like his narrator, was brought up largely in the Netherlands, trained as a lawyer, and has worked (and currently lives) in New York. But all writers quarry their material where they can, and few are blessed with the power of genuine invention.
The novel’s action — and quite a lot does actually happen — takes place between 2003 and 2005. Political events don’t figure prominently, obscured by more pressing local concerns. But the New York weather, and events such as the power outages of August 2003, are prominent, as are the moods of the Hudson River and the topography of Brooklyn.
Is it all symbolic, you inevitably ask yourself — the adult waif who wanders about the Chelsea Hotel complete with angel’s wings, the woman who wants to be beaten with a belt, the inflated figure of Ronald McDonald keeling over in the Thanksgiving Day streets? If it is, it’s because modern lives viewed as fragments can appear so pointless and sad, only to be redeemed (if at all) by a grand project such as a cricket arena or a marriage sustained against all the odds.
These may not be original ideas, but they’re nonetheless marvelously encapsulated in this vivid, endearing, yet strangely cool new novel.
RSS