Too much information

In managing too carefully the revelation of truth, parents often betray it. Graham Swift’s new novel is narrated by a mother and addressed to ‘you’, her teenage twins, boy and girl. It involves us, as voyeurs, in the revelation of a truth that will come as a bolt from the blue to the children. But it tries to manage this revelation so carefully, with so many detours, so much cushioning and qualification, that we may easily wonder whether the truth has been served or betrayed.

The novel takes the form of a letter written by Paula, the mother, late one night while her children and her husband, Mike, sleep. The next day, in accordance with a plan she and Mike have decided on long before, the children, who have just turned 16, will be told that he is not their biological father. We are to understand that they will receive their mother’s letter after the news has been broken verbally.

Paula writes to the twins: ‘I want you to listen to these things I’m telling you and not to hear them at all.’ The hesitation and loving anxiety in her voice make her a credible and often moving scribe. Swift’s writing throughout is as assured and subtle as ever.

But the effect of Paula’s narrative loops and delays and hesitations is to create a sense of suspense which is never quite fulfilled. To the extent that it is, the reader’s excitement and interest are snuffed out by over-elaboration: Paula’s nervous verbosity — the endless qualifying and fluffing up of emotional pillows — never really lets up, so that much of what is poignant and heartfelt in her account comes to seem mundane and repetitive.

It turns out that Mike was shooting blanks.