Small World is British novelist Matt Beaumont’s sixth
novel. The story takes place in North London, and involves a long list of
characters: a washed up political journalist and his wife (who runs an art and
craft shop), their marriage increasingly coming under strain as they try one
unsuccessful IVF attempt after another; a stand-up comedian—he steals lines
from an Indian waiter, who is his fan—and his (the comedian’s) wife, who is a
full-time mother and unofficial agony aunt to her friends, who include the
infertile woman; a workaholic, control-freak woman, who is an HR executive—she
has become friends with the comedian’s wife at the antenatal classes—and her
(HR executive’s) very odd husband who calls himself a graphic designer but has
not worked in years, and has a secret crush on the infertile woman, whom he
spies on every day for months from the Star Bucks opposite her shop. The
infertile woman, who does not know the HR executive woman, has noticed him of
course, but she is not sure whether the weirdo is stalking her or her eighteen
year old assistant, who
comes from a dysfunctional family and hangs out with kids from backgrounds
similar to her, one of whom is a tall (and gorgeous despite, or perhaps because
of, dread-locks) black boy, whose mother works as a nurse in the Accident &
Emergency Department of one of the hospitals in London. The HR executive has an
Aussie nanny who, incredibly, does not do drugs, but has an Aussie friend who
is also a nanny and does drugs. Then there is a policeman who is more bitter
and disillusioned than the share-holders of the Royal Bank of Scotland; his
live-in girlfriend is the PA of the HR executive woman. Have I missed anyone?
Oh yes! There is an alcoholic bum who does not let his constant inebriation
come in the way of stealing things, and possibly raping and murdering (not at
the same time) young women; a Czech baby sitter who has a nose longer than the
Sidney Harbour bridge and is saving money for a nose job; and a Northern woman
who comes to London after her husband has a pulmonary embolism while he is
attending a conference—well, not strictly during the conference; he gets the
embolism in the evening, after the conference, when he is visiting a prostitute, and is
admitted on the same ward of the hospital where the infertile woman is also
admitted after she experiences unexpected complications of her treatment in a
private clinic (which by the way is lousy), the same hospital in the A & E
department of which the black kid’s mother works, the department to which the
Aussie nanny brings the son of the HR executive woman twice in space of two
weeks—once when he has pneumonia and another time when her druggy Aussie friend
inadvertently gives the kid ecstasy. Is this all getting a bit confusing? I
don’t blame you; I am getting confused myself. All these characters either meet
each other or run into each other—some because they know each other, others by
chance—so often that you begin to wonder, like the weirdo husband of the HR
executive, whether their lives and meetings are not following an invisible programme,
their movements manipulated by an unseen hand (the God or the author?).
This has of course
been done before—a long list of characters, many of whom do not know each other
but keep on bumping into each other, and
vitally influence the course of events. Paul Theroux did it in the seventies in
his novel, Family Arsenal. Small World follows the same format
as that which Beaumont employed in one of his earlier novels, the hilarious The
Book, the Film, the T shirt: the story moves forward via first person
monologues or narratives of all the characters.
There are more characters in Small World than in EastEnders, and
they all like to talk uninhibitedly. To Beaumont’s credit, he juggles them
adroitly and does not allow at any time the pace of the narrative slacken. He does not narrate the same incident from
the point of view of different persons; rather a given scenario is taken
forward by the first-person narratives of the characters involved. Beaumont has
the knack of dramatizing the happenings and the misunderstandings, which
further enhances the impact. There are enough twists and dramatic scenes which
keep the readers’ interests going.
This book is something
of a departure for Beaumont, who made his debut in 2000 with e,
the first novel, his official website informs, written entirely in e-mails.
Whereas his previous novels were out and out comedies, Small World is a
potpourri of many emotions; it is not your routine feel-good novel. None of the
characters, with the possible exception of the Aussie nanny, is particularly
likeable; some are downright creepy. For the same reason, perhaps, they are
very believable: the three middle class couples in Small World could be your
next-door neighbours. While extremely funny in parts, the novel essentially
holds a mirror to the bleak lives of the materialistic and outwardly
conventional middle classes (or to be more specific, the materialistic and
outwardly conventional middle classes who live in London). The humour—a lot of
it is in the dialogues rather than in the situations—has an edge to it. The
casual racism of the police, for example, when they speak about and deal with black
and other minorities, manages to make the reader laugh and feel unnerved at the
same time. Beaumont makes liberal (and effective) use of irony. He also tries,
with a degree of success, big emotions. Small World is like a big
roller-coaster ride that is good fun but nonetheless leaves you feeling dizzy
at the end: a laugh-out-loud section is
immediately (and unexpectedly) followed by tragedy, or love followed by
violence.
A great strength of Small
World is its narrative style. Beaumont follows the dictum of keeping
the vocabulary simple, as though mindful of the other pressures and constraints
on his readers’ time. It works well and the novel, despite being, at four
hundred plus pages, humongous, does not weary its reader. Beaumont has
effectively captured the lingo of the teenagers, which gives it a pulse of
authenticity. (This is not an easy skill to master. Some years ago, I had read
a novel by Justin Cartwright, titled The Promise of Happiness: the novel
was about everything but happiness, and Cartwright had attempted to portray the
speaking style of the younger generation by repeated use of ‘like’, which only
made the sentences awkward.)
Small World does not pretend to give a big message, at
least not directly or obviously. It does not attempt to ponder on the
imponderables. What it does is entertain you with a riveting story, told flowingly, which has believable
characters, which throws enough surprises to keep your interest sustained, and
which has a bit of twist at the end. It may not be the greatest novel ever
written; neither is the format the most original; but it is an easy read and for
the most part very entertaining. Not many novels can be said to do it.
(I wonder where Matt Beaumont has disappeared. Following the publication
of his first novel in 2000, he published six novels in the next nine years, a
very impressive rate. He seems to have fallen silent in the past nine years.)
