Never Never – David Gaffney

Late Jan 2009 (double header with Engleby)

Unusually it received a range of opinions, and I think was unique as a book if only in its ability to move Mark Th to passionate dislike; I would go as far as to say it annoyed him. A rare thing. Equally rare was Richard's disliking and his score. Despite these firsts, the general opinion was that there was little merit in his writing abilities: unbelievable characters, unlinked plot lines, sneering in the place of humour.

On the positive side, he definitely captured West Cumbria, for those of you who have been. And he provoked a lively debate amongst us about debt, its management, and its power to alter and destroy relationships. The general feeling, however, was that instead of a sympathetic dealing of people with genuine interesting dilemmas, he created absurd one's and invited us to 'enjoy'.

From RG: 'Never Never' didn't really do a lot for me. Despite being fairly easy reading in some ways, I found it difficult to get into in a chunky way and neither the characters nor the story line really grabbed me. What struck me after a while was that the style was strangely reminiscent of Tom Sharpe novels i.e. taking a largely realistic scenario and then applying unbelievable and extreme occurrences to it, with an amount of attached slapstick. However, he didn't take this as far as Sharpe and thus failed to genuinely get into the surreal humour, whilst by stepping beyond the realistic he blew it on both counts. I ended up not knowing whether he was trying to present a realistic account of what happens or not. I was surprised to read at the end he was once a debt counsellor in Moss Side as I had assumed that the debt counselling materials were an extreme parody (maybe they were not) - though I could see some parallels between the people and settings from the advice centre with those whom I met and worked with in my days of developing and funding the voluntary/charitable sector. Talking of which, he finally blew any credentials to be writing an informed story when he did the grant application bit - completely divorced from what really happens. Similarly the Bennett character was totally unbelievable - people like that just don't exist and operate in the field he was supposed to be in.

3.73