This is another one of those novels that oscillates between present-day and years earlier. In the present, Maurice and Charlie are waiting in a Spanish port for the twenty three year-old Dilly, who fled from home three years earlier to join a kind of weird cult-like group of nomads with dreadlocks who take care of dogs. I’m a little fuzzy on how it all works, but basically it seems you can’t travel with dogs so there’s a network that trades off who takes care of dogs in different places. Anyway, Maurice and Charlie are trying to reconnect with her. The other half of the novel delves into the backstory of Maurice and Charlie and their involvement in drug trafficking, their tumultuous relationship with Cynthia, Dilly’s mother.
There is a dramatic difference between how much I enjoyed the two sections of the book. The present-day waiting room felt like a bottle episode of a TV show and I was absolutely for it. Beginning the book, I was prepared for 250 pages of waiting in the same location and the hijinx that would ensue. The flashbacks largely lost my interest and they lost even more steam towards the end of the book. There were two-point-five exceptions to the lacklustre flashbacks: 1) the moment Maurice contemplates a murder-suicide with his infant daughter, preparing to drive the car into the water 2) the moment Maurice slices his eye open with a razor — such a cringe-inducing visceral moment and 2.5) when Maurice and Cynthia have a bad land deal that makes them think their new build is haunted and that it will destroy their luck.
It’s hard to place the two timelines into relationship with one another, but I will attempt to outline some differences:
The present-day narrative is replete with snappy dialogue. It reads like a play, specifically Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were sinister while being comical. As a result, it feels far more lively than the flashbacks, which are more narration-driven much of the time. The relationship between the characters feels more sincere, whereas in the past I’m a little unclear on why Maurice and Charlie both fell in love with Cynthia or why it really matters that they reunite with Dilly*.
The present-day, before Barry reveals the past, is more infused with tension. At the outset of the novel, you’re not clear on why they’re waiting for Dilly or what they’ll do if they get a hold of her. In one scene they are interrogating a boy they suspect knows her and there’s an underlying tension to the conversation which escalates when they jab their thumbs into his eyes. It’s a shocking scene and the stakes are unclear, which makes it even better: are they going to hurt Dilly, despite their love for her? Is she part of a more sinister network, too? Given that there’s a line in the book about how drug trafficking isn’t profitable anymore (with the implication that human trafficking is more lucrative), there’s an underlying tension with what the backstory might have been.
The heart of the story was in the present and the past felt lifeless by comparison, leading me to the conclusion that not every book needs to delve into backstory or parallel narratives. As more about the past gets revealed, there are some surprising moments that serve to enhance the relationship between Maurice and Charlie in the present. Most notably, and this is a spoiler, it is revealed that Charlie and Cynthia were caught in bed together and Maurice stabbed him in the leg. Their reunion in a mental hospital is an amusing coincidence. (Okay, as I write this, maybe there were more charming moments in the past than I’m giving credit for).
I used an asterisk earlier noting a complaint that I had about how the stakes and importance of finding Dilly are unclear. I think I needed more moments of Maurice bonding with Dilly and/or more of Maurice and Charlie talking about their reasons for loving the ambiguously-fathered Dilly. I voice the criticism with reservation, though, because Barry does offer something for consideration that would mitigate such a criticism. In the backstory, Maurice’s father is presented as having mental illness, possibly dementia, and Maurice seems to have a fulfilled genetic predisposition where he ends up in the mental hospital later. When Charlie joins him they hang out all day watching Goodfellas. Their perceptions of themselves seem so grandiose, kept in check by Cynthia and her daughter. To circle back, if the two of them are committed to reuniting with Dilly as a vapid “blood is thicker than water” mob mentality (excuse the pun), it gives their characters a purposefully pathetic dimension.
When it comes to the writing quality, I’ve mentioned the dialogue, which is great. The other component that I quite liked were phrases of surprising poetry within the text. The whole book is written in short sections—whether one sentence or half-page paragraphs—that gives it an aphoristic quality. In turn, there are brief moments of poetry describing images. There are also poetic semi-philosophical claims, my favourite of which being “we are in the suburbs of hysteria” (7).
Ultimately, though, the book ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. In the interest of seeing how my thoughts compare to those of other readers, I went to the Wikipedia page and found that Johanna Thomas-Corr “panned the novel and called its story ‘flimsy.’” The word that had come to mind for me was “thin.” Thomas-Corr says “A novel needs interiority, an intimacy between characters and reader [...] Barry does the bare minimum.” I feel like that’s a fair critique, if a bit harsh. There is much stated, I’m sure, in the subtext but I am not an adept enough reader to appreciate it. The idea of the book ending on a missed connection is fine, but I needed something. Some sort of transformation to make the book feel worth it (though the fact that the central characters never change is pretty crucial to some of their misadventures). I often get excited for Booker Prize winners and nominees, which is why I picked this up (it was longlisted), but overall it was just alright.
Happy reading!
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