This was another
book picked up from Oxfam before our holiday, I hadn't even noticed
that it was Ardal O'Hanlon of Father Ted fame.
I probably need to
give the standard spoiler warning...
This is a dark tale,
a “tragedy” in the formal sense of that word.
It took me a while
to get that the two tracks of story telling, the first person
narrative of Patrick and the diary of Francesca, were not just
different view points but also separate chronologies. This is a
token of the fact that while Patrick and Francesca were in a
relationship they were never quite having a shared experience.
At one level it is a
tale of teenage angst, but it is not simply that. Although it is
never explicitly referenced I assume that Patrick is placed somewhere
on the autistic spectrum – there are certain attributes, such as
his habit of memorising all the number plates in the town, which are
stereotypes of that spectrum, while we might also look in this
direction as an explanation of his complete failure to understand how
Francesca was feeling.
Francesca equally
might be suffering from anxiety, is she “just shy” or is there
something more? That she attempts to break away from Patrick on a
number of times during the book, and yet when the next chapter comes along
and she is back with him (if she was ever away) it is heart-rending.
What is it that brings her back, is the pain of being with Patrick
really better than the desolation of being alone?
As the book
progresses Patrick definitely becomes an unsympathetic character,
life may not of dealt him the best of hands but he doesn't even use
what he has been given to his advantage, but I am much more
conflicted about Francesca. SPOILER – as she ends up dead, she is
the victim. For that I feel sorry for her, but I am not sure that I
like her.
The cover of the
book is full of reviews that found it “funny” - I am not sure if
they read the same book, there were moments of dark comedy, but that
is not the stand out impression. It is a powerful narrative, bleak,
unpleasant, but once you are in it, perhaps a bit like Francesca, it
takes hold of you.
