Demob Happy

A river runs through it

8/10

‘South of the River‘ is an insightful and often moving novel revolving around the lives and loves of several inter-connected, mostly South London-based characters. It looks specifically at the changing fortunes of these individuals against the backdrop of New Labour and Tony Blair, from the landslide election night to the post-9-11 period. While contemporaenous politics, particularly the fox-hunting ban, play a part in the novel, they are neither the focal point nor dipicted in an overtly impartial way. Rather, the novel deals in timeless themes of love, responsibility, family, professional success and failure, and class, in a way that Tony Parson’s described (helpfully, on the front of the paperback edition) as “intimate and epic”.

Despite a terribly flat start, the characters tend to ring quite true, even if they are not always especially likeable. For the first few chapters, as the characters are intially introduced, I didn’t think I could make it through 500-plus pages of such aimless vacuity, but my perseverence rewarded. Each character has a first person voice in the novel and gradually gains colour and credibility through their self perception and the perception of them by others. Often brutally candid (particularly in its warts-and-all descriptions of sex) it spares few characters by making explicit their prejudices, pretentions and insecurities. But, in a way that recalls John Updike for me (and particularly his ‘Rabbit’ series), there is something to like - or at least identify with - in all of them. Admittedly, a couple of the characters - particularly pro-hunting country conservative Jack and his failed playwrite nephew Nathan - often veer towards characateur, but Morrison tends to get away with it with cutting wit.

What is particularly interesting and unusual about ‘South of the River’ is that it combines this well developed human drama with experimental tangents. The fox theme bubbles up in some highly unlikely places, and there are some short-story-within-a-novel devices that allow Morrison to break out of the first person formular and make playful digressions. He manages to pull this difficult trick off without - as these enterprises often do - seeming pretentious or sacrificing the overall mood of the novel. Funny, heartfelt and believable, ‘South of the River’ restores your faith in modern Britain as an interesting literary landscape.