London and the South East, The Innocent, Spring, All That Man Is, Turbulence – the titles of David Szalay’s first five novels, which won a flurry of prizes, are all captured, in a sense, by Flesh, his sixth. Much of the latest book is set in Britain’s capital, and the innocent frequently lose that tag as its protagonist battles to advance his position.
When we first meet him, Istvan is 15, living with his mother in Budapest in the dying days of communism and being introduced to sex by a neighbour. Having served a jail sentence for killing the woman’s husband, this ‘solitary individual’ joins the army and, after tours in the Middle East, heads for London – only to be stuck on the door of a strip club. But his fortunes pick up when he saves a man’s life late one night.
Mervyn runs a private security company and assigns Istvan, after some etiquette training, as a chauffeur to the millionaire Nyman family, who live in Cheyne Walk. The new employee soon beds Helen Nyman, who flits between fancy lunches and private views. His boss’s untimely death leaves Istvan making bold plans with money meant for the only son, Thomas.
A gripping study of the choices that can make or break a life, the novel ends with Istvan back where he started. Until the last page, it’s hard to know how to feel about him. Many of his actions are consciously selfish (making the publisher’s description of how he is ‘unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp’ not quite accurate). Yet the man whose surname we never learn grows a bit more self-aware with time.
References to luxury food and pastimes cast his world as a gilded cage, with the blend of wealth, class and Tory politics calling to mind The Line of Beauty. Szalay draws characters superbly, drives the plot deftly and mercilessly exposes the emptiness of such phrases as ‘Are you okay?’ and ‘It’s okay’. Throughout, one wills Istvan and others to ask searching questions and give proper answers. If they’d only allowed their speech and sentiments to go more than skin deep, one senses that things might not have fallen apart in the end.
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