I’ve been a huge fan of Mars-Jones’s work since I read his first book, The Lantern Lectures, back in the mid-eighties, followed by the shared collection of HIV/AIDS stories with Edmund White, A Darker Proof; and the first novel, The Waters of Thirst. In 1983 he edited a wonderful anthology of queer fiction entitled, Mae West Is Dead. Twice named Granta young novelist of the year, it seemed he could do no wrong and I was smitten. Next came the John Cromer doorstops, Pilcrow (2008) and Cedilla (2011). His intellect is formidable and his reviews can be scathing. His review of Michael Cunningham’s novel, By Nightfall won him the Hatchet Job of the Year award. Last year’s Box Hill is a charming account of a Master/Slave gay relationship between two gay bikers, set in the 1970s. Its brevity – after the prolix Cromer volumes – was very much part of its strength. It felt urgent, important, sexy, and wise. I was surprised to discover that it was an old piece, written originally in the 90s. It didn’t feel it. Batlava Lake, on the other hand (Fitzcaraldo Editions again), does feel like it was written in the 90s but without any of Box Hill’s sass and personality.
Like Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, there’s strong characterization through voice here and it reads like a dramatic monologue. Unlike Bennett, there’s no story here, no slow reveal of an explosive event. Barry just chats and the anecdotal tone started to grate on me after a while. I wanted him to tell a story, reveal something of himself for there to be a purpose to all this dull blathering about his dull little life All the anecdotes seem like smoke screens that will disperse to reveal: nothing much. How do you make a hollow man, an invisible man, a bone-crushingly tedious man engaging to a reader?
Barry has been posted in Kosovo just after the war, as an engineer working alongside the British Military. He’s pretty much friendless, for obvious reasons, and fails to command respect in his work colleagues or the soldiers he hangs out with; never ‘one of the lads’. There are hints of the quietest whisper that perhaps Barry’s marriage failed because of his interest in men, but I might even be inventing that as there’s nothing in the way of substantial evidence here. Barry gives nothing away. We’ve all met men like him and we’ve done our best to get away from them at great speed and avoid their like in future. I didn’t expect to encounter one in the pages of a novel by Adam Mars-Jones, whose camp sensibility is such that he debuted with a story about the Queen catching rabies off a Corgi, and who once shared the ICA stage with queer theorist the late Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick, quipping that he had no idea why the ICA had paired the two writers other than they wanted to have “Adam and Eve at the ICA”.
Yes, this novella “an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism” (as the blurb claims), but I don’t agree that it “explores” masculinity, class, and identity. There’s no exploration here. Barry’s too lacking in self-awareness to offer much in the way of exploration. The plot, as such, culminates in a race across the titular lake. At last, I thought, something’s happening. Barry gets knocked out of his team’s boat by a water cannon he believes is meant only for him. By this point in the tale, I’d have hired a water cannon myself.
BATLAVA LAKE Adam Mars-Jones https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/ Published 23 June 2021
Adam Mars-Jones’ first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture, won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1982, and he appeared on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists lists in 1983 and 1993. His debut novel, The Waters of Thirst, was published in 1993 by Faber & Faber. It was followed by Pilcrow (2008) and Cedilla (2011), which form the first two parts of a semiinfinite novel series. His essay Noriko Smiling (Notting Hill Editions, 2011) is a book-length study of a classic of Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring. His memoir Kid Gloves was published by Particular Books in 2015. He writes book reviews for the LRB and film reviews for the TLS.
Review by Jonathan KempQueerguru London Contributing Editor Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).
Labels: 2021, Adam Mars Jones, Batlava Lake, book review, Jonathan Kemp
