A Son of the Rock

Hodder, 2010 , 437p.

The novel charts the course of the on-off, but mostly off, relationship of two people, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, who hook up on the night of their graduation party, 15^th July 1988, St Swithin’s Day as it happens, on what, for him, was meant to be a one-off but for her a long-desired outcome.

The particular conceit of the book is that it returns to view the pair on the same day in the following years as their lives go on different trajectories, so we see their friendship evolve in snapshots, their comings together and driftings apart in the interstices looked back on.

Emma gained a double first at University but Dexter only a 2:2. She is the much more competent of the two mainly because he is a bit of an idiot but it is his career which takes off as he rapidly becomes a success on late Friday night television as co-presenter of a vapid TV show. His rising without trace is emblematic of the unfairness of life. She struggles to get by with writing before finding work in a Tex-Mex restaurant and eventual success when she takes up teaching English. With his life spent in drinking and womanising, quite what she continues to see in him is a mystery.

Their friendship endures in a sporadic way, she an emotional crutch for him, he usually taking her for granted. They have relationships with other people, unsatisfactory for the most part though his short marriage to Sylvie brings a daughter Jasmine, a bright spot in his life, but he is not really mature enough to be a father.

Only the odd unfelicitous phrase mars the writing and there are some nice authorial touches. In a restaurant on a mutual holiday, “The waiter arrived with complimentary Greek brandies, the kind of drink that can only be given away.” In her early thirties “She owns a cafetiere and for the first time in her life she is considering investing in some pot-pourri.” At a restaurant there is a mild critique of culinary pretension – a tower of jenga-cut chips – all but raw – with the dish’s fish component balanced precariously on top.

Really though this is the same old often told story. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, they continue to hold a torch for each other. There seems to be an infinite number of ways to chart the vagaries of human attraction.

Pedant’s corner:- “gin and tonics” (gins and tonic,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “‘Someone I can rely onto stick around’” (rely on to stick,) “took a bit an upturn” (a bit of an upturn,) “as if were an” (as if it were an,) “his palette cleansed with a pail of iced Lilt” (the only stuff you can cleanse a palette with is paint-stripper, a palate though could be cleansed with Lilt. Palate was used correctly later,) “‘from the teets of cows’” (teats,) “ ‘not to go the premiere’” (not to go to the premiere,) focussed (x 2, focused,) “as the band play” (as the band plays) “‘That’s that what I meant’” (that ‘that’ isn’t needed,) “laying down again” (lying down again,) smoothes (smooths,) “aqualine features” (aquiline,) “a ball-peen hammer” (ball-pein,) “Suki Meadows’ face” (Meadows’s,) snuck (sneaked,) “a pair of booties” (bootees,) soccer (Grrrr, it’s football,) “a funeral directors” (a funeral director’s,) podiums (the Latin plural is podia.)