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The Escape
By Adam Thirlwell
Jonathan Cape £16.99
reviewed by David Herman
Raphael Haffner, the hero of Adam Thirlwell’s new novel, has come to central Europe to reclaim a villa which used to belong to his wife’s family but was confiscated, first by the Nazis and then by the communists. So why is he hiding in a wardrobe watching a young woman make love to her boyfriend?
The opening scene will come as no surprise to anyone who read Thirlwell’s first novel, Politics (2003). It divided readers; some found it annoying and tiresome, others thought it was clever, original and lighthearted. Both fans and critics agreed on one thing: it had lots of sex. So does The Escape. Haffner has always chased women, even when he was married. Now, at 78, he shows no signs of slowing down.
But Haffner’s appetite often leads him into indignity and farce. He aspires to seriousness but is unable to resist temptation. By his bed he has histories of ancient Rome, but in his bed he “thrived on the lower thrills”.
He thinks back over a long life — fighting at Anzio, a successful career as a banker, dancing with Mrs Thatcher. He thinks deep thoughts about philosophy and history and by the pool he reads Thomas Mann.
But he is also a creature of appetite: downing vodkas, eating the biggest (but second-best) Chinese meal in contemporary fiction and torn between his love for Zinka and an affair with the older Frau Tummel.
This is straight out of Bellow and Roth. A Jewish hero torn between the high and the low, “my squalid Don Quixote: avid for the higher things”. Like Bellow’s Herzog and Roth’s Zuckerman, his mind is always wandering back to the past.
The novel moves back and forwards in time, telling Haffner’s life story in flashbacks. “Haffner didn’t know what to say. He was lost, in contemplation of his past.” And, again, like Bellow and Roth’s heroes, he is in flight. From what? Like them, he is in flight from the world. He escapes (a recurring word) to the past — and to women.
Thirlwell won’t mind such comparisons. In the Postscript he acknowledges quotations from more than 40 writers and historical figures, from Brecht to Sterne. This is the sort of thing that drove some readers of Politics and Miss Herbert (2007) crazy. Even admirers will wonder whether Thirlwell is seeking a voice rather than finding one.
Amid the sexual farce and dark reflections on Jews and the 20th century, there is some terrific writing. But there is some very bad prose, too, and it rarely feels fresh and original.
Sometimes it feels like secondhand Bellow, sometimes Amis (“he gave out a staccato mirthless laugh — a studio audience of one”). This time, sex and cleverness is not enough.
David Herman is the JC’s chief fiction reviewer