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buddhafish 's review for:
Batlava Lake
by Adam Mars-Jones
67th book of 2021.
2.5/3. This is Fitzcarraldo’s latest publication, officially published tomorrow, June 23. Batlava Lake, Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton is a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. He’s a recently divorced, non-sensitive, handy-man, which makes him an unlikely narrator for this 90-page monologue about his time in Kosovo and his ex-wife and children. A “comic” novel, which never means laugh-aloud funny but there’s a certain appreciation or awareness that there are comic elements at play. It is a strange novel that never truly amounts to anything, but at the same time, right at the end, has an odd unsettling feeling just on the edge.
The blurb promises a look at "masculinity, class and identity". These things interest me, particularly the former. After being a martial-arts instructor for six years, I have seen every colour of masculinity, and supposed masculinity, there is. It doesn't really come across. There's a general idea about men, and military men, but it wasn't really as forefront as I imagined. The class and identity idea barely comes in at all. A lot of the words in this novel (very short novel) are used on comical anecdotes and the climax of the novel (because I was starting to worry there wasn't going to be one and it would just fizzle out) consists of the Royal Engineers corps building their own boats to race one another on the Batlava Lake. There's a comical anecdote about the right type of poles for the flags. A memory about Pizza Hut with his kids. One about going to a "restaurant" that opened up near their base in Kosovo. It's all fairly tongue-in-cheek; Barry is a fairly useless guy at anything but his job: he forgot his wife birthday once, he is terrible at writing letters and talking on the phone, throws some homophobic remarks about if his sons turned out to be gay... Overall a fairly ridiculous narrator who we can easily mock. Lee Child, for some reason, is quoted on the back saying it is an "everyman narrative". The novel is basically an odd, "comical" Notes from Underground, a civil engineer in place of a civil servant and a rambling idiot in the place of a bitter existential Russian.
The ending comes close to something unsettling, as I said. I was expecting at some point, and hoping too, that the tone of the novel would shift and we would get something darker coming through. It's almost there. I did have a peculiar feeling hit me on finishing, so I think the novel did something, though I'm not sure what, exactly. I read it in a day, so that's a saving grace if you are interested. The monologue style can either be slow and gruelling or easy-going; Barry's voice is fairly easy-going (and I'll also point out, very contemporary-English). Study of a man, a man who is desperately trying to tell himself he has worth, that his wife gives him a hard time and he's, I guess, a good person. That's the masculinity thing at-play. The ending is the shadow of something far larger, which might be something to do with military forces in foreign countries. If you're looking for an absolutely brilliant comic novel, turn to Fitzcarraldo's publication last month, with Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. My review of that is here.
2.5/3. This is Fitzcarraldo’s latest publication, officially published tomorrow, June 23. Batlava Lake, Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton is a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. He’s a recently divorced, non-sensitive, handy-man, which makes him an unlikely narrator for this 90-page monologue about his time in Kosovo and his ex-wife and children. A “comic” novel, which never means laugh-aloud funny but there’s a certain appreciation or awareness that there are comic elements at play. It is a strange novel that never truly amounts to anything, but at the same time, right at the end, has an odd unsettling feeling just on the edge.
The blurb promises a look at "masculinity, class and identity". These things interest me, particularly the former. After being a martial-arts instructor for six years, I have seen every colour of masculinity, and supposed masculinity, there is. It doesn't really come across. There's a general idea about men, and military men, but it wasn't really as forefront as I imagined. The class and identity idea barely comes in at all. A lot of the words in this novel (very short novel) are used on comical anecdotes and the climax of the novel (because I was starting to worry there wasn't going to be one and it would just fizzle out) consists of the Royal Engineers corps building their own boats to race one another on the Batlava Lake. There's a comical anecdote about the right type of poles for the flags. A memory about Pizza Hut with his kids. One about going to a "restaurant" that opened up near their base in Kosovo. It's all fairly tongue-in-cheek; Barry is a fairly useless guy at anything but his job: he forgot his wife birthday once, he is terrible at writing letters and talking on the phone, throws some homophobic remarks about if his sons turned out to be gay... Overall a fairly ridiculous narrator who we can easily mock. Lee Child, for some reason, is quoted on the back saying it is an "everyman narrative". The novel is basically an odd, "comical" Notes from Underground, a civil engineer in place of a civil servant and a rambling idiot in the place of a bitter existential Russian.
The ending comes close to something unsettling, as I said. I was expecting at some point, and hoping too, that the tone of the novel would shift and we would get something darker coming through. It's almost there. I did have a peculiar feeling hit me on finishing, so I think the novel did something, though I'm not sure what, exactly. I read it in a day, so that's a saving grace if you are interested. The monologue style can either be slow and gruelling or easy-going; Barry's voice is fairly easy-going (and I'll also point out, very contemporary-English). Study of a man, a man who is desperately trying to tell himself he has worth, that his wife gives him a hard time and he's, I guess, a good person. That's the masculinity thing at-play. The ending is the shadow of something far larger, which might be something to do with military forces in foreign countries. If you're looking for an absolutely brilliant comic novel, turn to Fitzcarraldo's publication last month, with Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. My review of that is here.