FICTION: Resistance is futile. You either accept the demands of Nicola Barker's extraordinary style, her very insistent extraordinary style, or you reject them. Ian Sansom reviews Behindlings by Nicola Barker.
Resistance is futile. You either accept the demands of Nicola Barker's extraordinary style, her very insistent extraordinary style, or you reject them. You either derive from her work a deep and singular pleasure, you either love something like this - "Dewi chewed solemnly on a heavily-salted tomato sandwich as he peered through his living room window, his dust-iced skin zebraed by the sharp stripes of winter light which gushed, unapologetically - like hordes of white-frocked debutantes flashing their foaming silk petticoats in eager curtsies - between the regimented slats of his hand-built shutters" - or you find it an irritation. You're either a follower, or you're not. The judges of the IMPAC literary award certainly were: they gave it to Barker for her last novel, Wide Open.
Barker's publishers describe Behindlings as her "break-out commercial novel", but anyone familiar with her previous work will rightly be sceptical. It's simply impossible to imagine Barker indulging her audience, or wishing to flee from her usual territory, which is the world of the literary weird - and we're talking characters-named-after-the-word-for-bear-in-Hungarian kind of weird here. We're talking dot-to-dot pornography kind of weird. "Commercial" fiction is comforting: Barker's work is nothing if not challenging. It requires a violent concentration.
In the world of Nicola Barker you need to keep your wits about you. Barker is so much in love with language that sometimes she spoils her sentences, allowing them to run on and on and over the top, outpacing and then losing the reader entirely. Thus, "This querulous question emerged so quietly from the dreamy darkness where her face had once been, was framed so sadly, so meekly, that had - by sheer chance - a tiny muntjak been passing, it would've paused, lifted high its pale, soft muzzle and huffed a benign but inquisitive blast of sweet, straw-scented breath into the cold night air".
So. And anyway, in Behindlings, there is Canvey Island, in Essex. There is a mad New Age environmental visionary called Wesley, who organises a treasure-hunt. And the theft of an antique pond. And he has no fingers on his right hand. Because he accidentally killed his brother, and fed his fingers to an owl in penance. There is a beansprout farmer named after a famous English highwayman. And there are more twists and mini-plots which spin out of this weird little set-up than you'd find in your average Philip K. Dick. If this is break out commercial fiction, then John Barth's a sell-out.
Ian Sansom's The Truth About Babies was published earlier this year by Granta
Ian Sansom
Behindlings. By Nicola Barker. Flamingo, 535pp. £10.99