Hawthorn and Child
by Keith Ridgway
This is one of those strange novels that is not quite what it seems; at times it insinuates itself into your being so that you almost feel part of the story, at others you’re left outside the action observing from afar, and sometimes you can’t get your head around it at all.
Since its publication in 2012, it has been championed around the blogosphere, notably by John Self, but also Simon Savidge, and Will Rycroft amongst many others. It appeared in all of aboves’ year-end best of lists. After John Self’s repeated urging us all to read it, I gave in and bought a copy some months ago – later deciding to make it my first read of 2013.
Describing it is not easy though. If I said it’s an existential drama about the lives of two police detectives told through a series of mostly linked short stories about characters that come into and out of their lives, I’d be doing it a disservice in trying to categorise it at all. I can say that although it features policemen, it is not a crime novel, but a novel in which crimes happen, and I really enjoyed much of the writing right from the start…
He dreamed he was sleeping, and Child was driving. Driving but not moving. He was sleeping on the passenger seat and Child wrestled with the wheel, but the car was still. It was the city that was moving. It was dark. The city rushed past them like words on a screen, and he would have read them but they went too fast. He was filled with sorrow. It trickled through him and filled his eyes. He wept and he didn’t know why, and he was embarrassed by it but he could not stop. He cried so much that his face disappeared. He dreamed that the siren was on, and it was so loud that it woke him.
It’s the early hours of the morning and they are on their way to a seemingly random shooting; a young man thinks he has been shot from a vintage car. Hawthorn is still half asleep through their investigations but seems to perk up once the victim mentions the car. He and Child banter about it…
– He saw what he thought he saw.
– He’s been completely consistent.
– And vague. A low dark car. With running boards. A lovely car.
– Silver door handles.
– Silver door handles.
– It’s no more vague that descriptions we get from people who don’t know cars. We explicate.
– We what?
– Explicate?
– I don’t think that’s the right word, Hawthorn.
– We put them together.
– Extrapolate?
– Yeah.
– We work it out. But. You know. I’m not sure we have a model book that goes back to … whenever. If he insists on it the CPS will have a bit of a problem.
They wandered through the corridors. Hawthorn assumed Child knew where he was going.
– What it is, said Child, is that you don’t want to go back to Mishazzo.
Hawthorn looked at him.
– What?
– It’s a hallucination, or whatever. Rivers has it tied up. You want a loose thread so that we’re not back following that idiot all day long. Looking at windows. Going slowly insane.
It seems that Hawthorn is determined to hang on to something more interesting than surveillance which for 99.9% of the time must be the most boring thing in the world to do. We’ll find out more about Mishazzo later, when one chapter is told through the eyes of his scared to death driver. Meanwhile having introduced the two detectives, Ridgway lets them go their own ways for most of the book, popping in and out of stories, sometimes not present at all.
Hawthorn is perhaps the more interesting of the two cops, at least initially. He’s always has his notebook at the ready, like Columbo, and takes notes – but Hawthorn doesn’t recall why he wrote the particular words down that he did. He’s also gay and in How to have fun with a fat man we cut between three Hawthorn story threads – the thrill of policing a riot, a gay orgy (not for the prudish), and the tension at a family meal with his father.
In a later chapter, Rothko Eggs, we get to know Child a bit more through his daughter who lives with her mother. Modern art is teenager Catherine’s raison d’etre, and she struggles to find people to share her passion with, until first proper boyfriend Stuart comes along. Her father tries but gets them mixed up. This was my personal favourite episode.
In between these two, it seems that all of life is present – a football referee who sees ghosts, a particularly nasty suspected suicide, a story about a society of wolves, a man who obsessed with watching people die – from the twin towers to racing drivers. It’s an eclectic mix.
On a first reading, I freely admit I didn’t get it all, not always being sure if a particular strand was significant, or if it was an interlude. I did like the way that certain characters popped in and out of the narrative along with the titular detectives. I enjoyed the style of the dialogue – very direct, no unnecessary he said, she saids. Contrasting with the snappy dialogue was the observational nature of much of the descriptive text which adds to the pervading air of mystery.
This is a novel that would benefit from a second read. The fact that I’m even contemplating it, although not immediately, recognises that it is, in words from a song in The Sound of Music (sic) ‘something good’. The only down side for me was the cover which, although clever, I rather dislike! (8.5/10)
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I bought my copy. To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
Hawthorn and Child
