Rather a cold fish

Published first novel (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) at the age of 59, Richard and Judy choice, won Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; spent his whole career in industry; lives in Northumberland, wears tweed cap, likes fishing…These are the facts you read about Paul Torday time and again, and he must be getting tired of them.   

That first book really was good: the kind of novel you wish you’d written yourself, all done in emails, extracts from diaries and letters, snatches of Hansard, articles in newspapers, transcripts of interrogation sessions. It was a charming satire, about politicians, entrepreneurs and fish. His late career-change and success gave hope to thousands of 59-year-olds.

Now, I fear, people are going to start saying, ‘Tiredness can kill your prose. Take a break.’ The man has been churning out novels at the rate of at least one a year since 2007. They’re not bad, but they’re not a patch on Salmon Fishing. We all feel for him. Acts are hard to follow.

Rather a cold fish. That’s how I’d describe Ed Hartlepool, the main character of this latest book, and indeed most of the other characters. From writing about literal cold fish, Torday is now writing about the human version. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some of my best friends are cold fish. Easily embarrassed, slightly uncommunicative English people are a fascinating breed. But I’m not sure Torday really means them to be this cold, this impenetrable, this sexless, this lacklustre. I think it’s more that he doesn’t make the effort to get inside their minds. So, as you read, you feel as if you’re perpetually in a waiting room, not quite getting to your appointment with the real person.