Review of The Post-Birthday World, did not finish

It is rare for me to put down a novel prior to reading the first twenty pages. The threshold point of twenty pages is a feature of a rule established through experience – if the novel has not ‘grabbed’ me by the 10% mark I turn to another novel. Life is too short for a bad novel.

However, The Post-Birthday World had me searching for another novel before the end of the second page.

The problem was a simple one.

It was there in the first paragraph.

First paragraphs of novels play a very important role. One famous opening paragraph brilliantly frames the whole of the novel. This priceless opening is from Pride and Prejudice:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man

 in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

 

The first paragraph of The Post-Birthday World is:

“What began as coincidence had crystallized into tradition: on the sixth of July,

they would have dinner with Ramsey Acton on his birthday.”

 

And the problem is with a single word: “coincidence”. For, one recognises before page two is over that there was no coincidence at all. There is instead a contrivance.

The contrivance of dining as a foursome.

The meal enjoyed by two couples, arose through the scheming of the invitee. The invitee, a married woman named Jude, found her husband poor dining company (page 2: “One-on-one he had bored her silly”). The invitee could not bear dining with her husband alone. The motive of dining as more than a couple lies in Jude’s sharing of her husband’s fame: “Maybe Jude had loved dragging Ramsey out to impress colleagues but was not sufficiently impressed on her own behalf.”

Unpacking the distinction between coincidence and contrivance, I recognised:

>The effort of starting the tradition was deliberate. The author identifies that on the part of the invitee: “Jude had seemed driven to nail down a foursome so that her illustrator could meet her husband, Ramsey”. The author also identifies the nonplussed manner of the invited female of promoting the notion of the event to her male partner: “[Irina] Jude wants me to meet her husband Raymond or something”. So, the initiating event arose clumsily yet intentionally.

>In contrast, a dining tradition that would begin by coincidence would most likely require a chance of meeting of the diners at the same restaurant. Perhaps the coincidence would arise as two couples both approached the same restaurant with individual bookings for tables of two. It would not commence through any degree of effort. 

>Any element of coincidence is overridden by the invitee’s driving desire to have another couple accompany her at the meal.

The coincidence/contrivance distinction perhaps illustrates poverty of other aspects of the novel – hence the ‘did not finish’. Why continue when other clangers are likely to be found. The Guardian’s review of the novel recognises the laboured nature of the main male character’s fame; his snooker playing. The Guardian cleverly suggests that: "the novel snookers itself through repetition".

Where Pride and Prejudices opening paragraph sets the scene of the whole novel and whets the appetite, The Post-Birthday World’s opening paragraph grinds.

Definitional

Coincidence: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.

Contrivance: the use of skill to create or bring about something, especially with a consequent effect of artificiality.

I found the novel in a street library. I returned it to a different street library. A neighbour may enjoy the novel better than me.

This post links from my Goodreads account where I rated it one star.

Shalom,

Ozhamada

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