Andy Miller

David Keenan, literary disruptor in chief

This wild and labyrinthine novel is an artistic gamble that more than pays off, and is in turns romantic, funny, terrifying and sincere

David Keenan at the Imagine the World Hay Festival in Mexico in 2018. Credit: Pedro Martin Gonzalez Castillo/Getty Images

Near to the heart of this wild and labyrinthine novel — on page 516 of 808 — a character in a letter addressed to his future self within the reminiscence of a disfigured and imprisoned second world war sailor who will subsequently be transformed via sorcery, surgery and sex into a medium and prophet, eventually finding his way to Scotland where he will marry his own wife again, though possibly not in that order, states the following:

My studies in magic and experimental psychology and of course alchemy suggested that the goal of magical practice, which had become the goal of art practice, was a reuniting of fractured selves across time… This feeling of union, of union with the past, the present and the future, in a place that was outside of time, well, it was palpable, to say the least. And true to our beliefs, our gamble with art changed everything.

‘A gamble with art’ is a fitting description of Monument Maker, the novel as ‘a place outside of time’, where the author can combine a huge variety of characters with a multiplicity of ideas, memories and esoteric reading. And the book can be considered an artistic gamble too, with its author’s reputation as the high stake.

It is the fourth novel David Keenan has published in as many years. This Is Memorial Device (2017), set in the post-punk scene of early 1980s Scotland, was a cult hit; For the Good Times (2019) won the Gordon Burn Prize; and last year’s Xstabeth attracted attention from figures as diverse as Edna O’Brien, Salena Godden and Kim Gordon. Monument Maker features references to characters and locations from its predecessors in what is increasingly looking like either a cycle of novels or one vast fictional gallimaufry.

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