Back in the day Ian Macpherson was a stand-up with a killer opening line for wherever he played, eg Cheltenham: “They say you play Cheltenham twice – once on the way up... once on the way down. It’s great to be back.”
He has since turned away from stand-up to writing and Sloot (this fantastic word derives from a north Dublin pronunciation of “sleuth”) is his latest and begins with a stand-up’s last stand: “For every stand-up, there’s a moment where you realise you’ll never get that kind of laughter again, that the world has shifted imperceptibly on it’s axis, and this was Hayden’s moment. The generational handover moment. Nothing to be done. Move on.”
Hayden, the main character, is facing up to the decline of his stand-up career and the midlife view of death on the horizon. A sense of mortality hangs over the book. It begins with a death – his uncle Eddie’s. And indeed its form is an old-school crime novel/murder mystery, or rather, a book that is about writing such a book and the mechanics of said type of book.
Macpherson is strongly influenced by Flann O’Brien. There is a mysterious professor on a bike – a nod to The Third Policeman – who is the author of works on comedy, of which there are numerous footnotes walking about the text; also various nods to Schrodinger’s possibilities/probabilities; it particularly takes a leaf out of At Swim-Two-Birds, O’Brien’s masterful meta mash-up where the characters from the book written by the author come to life: “Hayden McGlynn was good-looking in a louche sort of way. Bit like me.”
Whilst pricking the often illusory difference between an author and their narrator/character, Macpherson then goes on to introduce his own voice into the text: “As a writer I’m always happy to travel...So when Hayden decided to take a couple of days’s respite from the real world and attend Eddie’s funeral, I thought, why not follow him over? Describe his journey, ex and internal.”
These meta touches are deployed lightly, lovingly and effectively and are often very funny, though obviously not as novel as when first deployed by The Flann.
So texts proliferate – the book Sloot, starring the narrator Hayden, is sporadically shot through with interjections by Macpherson (these are skillfully and humorously deployed); there are comments on the plot of Sloot, synopses of the crime novels Bram has collected, then transcripts of dead Eddie’s collection of old tapes (a nod to Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape). Later on a reference to a French film Les Tantes – which is a comedy about three eccentric aunties – draws attention to influences.
Hint of bubble
Sloot is a very funny book. Hayden is an alcoholic who’s given up the drink which is not easy because “he had to admit real life was a bit hard to take, and there was so much of it”. So he was on the sparkling water: “Interesting watery notes. Aquatic tones. Hint of bubble.” Nicely capturing the effort of the addict to make of real life a sufficiency.
The synopses of his friend Bram’s (a would-be-but-never-will-be writer) crime novels are more evidence of humour: “An American toddler, child psycho. Little Charlton. Blows his Ma away with her own gun. ...starts popping other people’s mammies. Contract stuff....”
Macpherson gets his old-school crime novel pieces in place – the crime, the body, the femme fatale, the suspects – and gathers them in situ for a reveal- the- murderer scene.There is a slight 10-page lull as this machinery moves forth but then Macpherson manages to pull a genuine surprise out of his plot bag and ties things up nicely.
There are some fantastically funny cameos from Garda Lou Brannigan, the hilarious Pascal O’Dea, and the drunken would-be crime solver, Quilty: “So where might we find the deceased?”
“Cremated,” said Hayden. Quilty stroked his chin with his free hand. “Quinteresting,” he said. “Most, most quinteresting. We could, one supposes, reassemble the corpse from his ashes for a closer look.”
Best of all – the three aunts – Dottie, Dodie and Florrie. Here are the presences closest to death yet the most full of life with exchanges and interactions that whizz along with wonderful witty wistfulness delivered in delicious doting Dublinese.
The comic energy of voice and character is given genuine weight by the sense of mortality that pervades; add a meta magnificence and you get a wonderfully funny novel bathed in a melancholic Clontarf garden light that shines, ultimately, with life and art.
