Review: Wear a cloak of somebody else's misery...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 28, 2013
I enjoyed this. Not in the sense of the enjoyment you might get from watching your team score the winning goal in stoppage time of the FA Cup final, or the kind of enjoyment you might get when you finally clamber aboard a rollercoaster for the first time at the age of 40 and it turns out they were pretty good fun after all. No, this was the kind of sadistic enjoyment of watching a man drinking himself into a despairing spiral of self harm and memory loss. What do you mean that doesn't sound like fun? No. It doesn't. And it's not. But it is. You know?This is the tale of Davy Sheridan, a self indulgent, overgrown child of a man who, in the very first chapter, finds himself the widowed father of a new born child. Davy's not the kind of man who'll stand up and take responsibility for his life. He's more the kind of guy who'll fill bottles of denial, whilst he empties bottles of booze. What then happens is eighteen days of unadulterated detachment from the world. I'd say there was misery, but there couldn't be misery if there were no feelings.So yeah, seriously, I enjoyed this. Allen Miles puts his anti-hero Davy in such a sympathetic position, that it makes it difficult for me as a reader not to relate in some way, even though I couldn't ever even start to imagine what his situation must feel like. It takes a crazy awesome amount of skill to make me think, 'Yeah, that's probably what I'd do,' and whilst I awaited the inevitable outcome, I slipped deeper into the detachment with Davy, and eagerly followed his increasingly bizarre behaviour with baited breath.I've read one review that says they got bored of the 'because there were no feelings,' phrase, but this was one of my favourite parts. Chuck Palahniuk, for example, uses repetition to perfection in the higher end of his work, 'Sorry mom, sorry God,' from Invisible Monsters, 'I know this, because Tyler knows this,' from Fight Club. It's a highly effective device that Miles demonstrates a controlled skill with, and as much as another reader might find it irritating, it shows a quality understanding of what the author wants to do with his work, and I for one applaud him for it. His descriptions of time lost in the fog of inebriation are top class, and his prose give you a real feel of that kind of camera effect they use in films. I forget the style. But you know the one that's attached to the front of a person and the world moves behind them? Well, that one. That's the vibe I got from the whole book, and I really liked it.So all in all, Allen Miles puts a totally unsympathetic character in an extremely sympathetic situation and his words grab you by the throat and shake you until you're sick. Then they shake you some more until you're dry retching into your Trilby. Then they shake you again until you're dripping with bile. My only complaint is the ending. As much as I knew it was coming, I kinda wanted something else.If you want to wear a cloak of somebody else's misery for a few hours, pick this bad boy up. You'll not be disappointed. Highly recommended reading.