Adam Thirlwell was named as one of the best young young British novelists by Granta in 2003, before his first novel, Politics, was even published. The Escape is his second novel, written after what he says is a period of contemplation of what sort of writer he wanted to be. Regrettably, more contemplation is required.
The cover features a prominent endorsement from Milan Kundera, a novelist who is clearly a formative influence on Thirlwell. However, whereas Kundera deals with great themes under the cover of his irony and play, Thirwell gives us very little beneath the surface. Again, Kundera’s influence is plain when Thirlwell sets out his main theme: a revolt against age, the desire to be childish again. This is straight out of one of the novels Kundera mentions so frequently in his essays, Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke.
The Escape centres on Rafael Haffner, doyen of the financial markets and ageing Don Juan. He is stranded somewhere in Central Europe and trying to establish his right to his dead wife’s property, which was previously appropriated by a nameless regime. (Thirlwell repeatedly remarks that, to Haffner, anything European that is not France is ‘Bohemia’ – something I’m surprised Kundera didn’t take issue with given his precision about that name in several works.)
The novel opens with Haffner hiding in a hotel room wardrobe, from which he watches two young locals have sex, at Zinka’s invitation. He lusts after Zinka, despite being at least two generations older than her. To say that this stretches our ability to empathise with Haffner would be a major understatement.
Thirlwell has written a fair amount about how squeamish we are about the novelistic sex scene. Maybe that’s true, but the sex scenes here are downright gratuitous, and not entirely pleasant. In one of the them, for example, Zinka shoves a lubricated candle up Haffner’ arse. The problem here is that there doesn’t seem to be any purpose to the perversion.
The Escape lurches from one situation to another without stirring any particular desire that it either linger or move on. The book could conceivably have been either half or twice as long as it is. Structurally, it is (I’m certain) deliberately reminiscent of Kundera’s brilliant Farewell Walz (which was first published in the UK under the title The Farewell Party). Like Kundera’s novel, it is separated into five parts, is set in a spa town somewhere in Central Europe, and features foreigners struggling to adapt to the local milieu. Thirlwell can’t possible be ignorant of this similarity – Kundera makes it plain in several places that the division of his novels into parts is very deliberate. But Thirlwell’s structure is not sound: it’s an imitation of a framework rather than a necessary one.
There are so many things to dislike about this book that it’s futile to try and list them all. But one particular irritation is the constant use of the inelegant constructions like “the bedroom of Haffner” which lend a nasty pomposity to the authorial interjections. Whereas Kundera is a master of interfering in his narrative, and he always has a reason to do so, Thirlwell just does so for the hell of it. It’s like reading one of those post-modern books that loves to remind you you’re reading a novel (yes, I’m looking at you If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller). That point has been comprehensively made elsewhere. Please can we move on now?
Finally, there is a ludicrous and irritating section at the end of the book in which Thirlwell lists the authors he quotes from, a list that Kundera is omitted from. But, don’t worry, he does include Virgil, Dostoevsky and Tupac Shakur. We are not pointed in the direction of the specific quotes or their sources, so this just screams ‘look how widely read I am’. For fuck’s sake. This nauseating section belongs in Pseuds’ Corner.
Thirlwell is certainly a talented writer, but he needs to find his own style, not borrow bits of other authors’ and assemble them like a poorly chosen buffet. As it is, The Escape is a mere simulacrum of a novel.
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