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Author Anthony Gardener |
Postscript to the hippy generation
In his first novel, Anthony Gardner proves to be an author who really cares about his characters, writes Piers Plowright
The Rivers of Heaven. By Anthony Gardner.
Starhaven £10
IT'S a bold writer who begins in heaven.
But that’s what north London author Anthony Gardner does in his first published novel. He also packs into less than 150 pages, the 1960s and 1970s, domestic abuse, death while playing chess, a family at war, the murky world of glossy journalism, and the journey of a child out of this world and back again.
A heady mix, slightly overstuffed with simile, a little breathless at times, but carrying – refreshingly – in these cynical and malicious times, a real passion for people and their affections.
Stella is a single mum. Ken, the brutal father of her son has vanished, after one brief and violent encounter that may have left the child, Kit, permanently damaged. Whatever has happened to him, the son’s inner thoughts run like a dream through the book, while Stella struggles to find work and some kind of happiness. On the way, she meets Clyde, a hospital worker, as gentle and caring as Ken wasn’t, and gets a job cleaning for a young photographer, Sebastian Terry.
Sebastian’s story is the other strand to this novel. Son of a Sixties painter who’s sold out to commercial film-making and an insecure mother who left her unfaithful husband, Sebastian had spent his school holidays “being tossed between them like a live grenade”. Two things have brought him some kind of security: photography and a rural retreat, belonging to his parents, but temporarily occupied by an eccentric chess-playing Pole, Mr Czernowsky.
Mr C is a splendid character, as are Sebastian’s family: woman-chasing father, ex-hippy mother, happily selling Turkish curios in Izmir, shrewd and easy-going Uncle Robbie still true to his artistic vision, and terrifyingly brassy and ambitious stepmother Vicky, who turns out to have a surprising connection with single mum Stella. Anthony Gardner looks at them all with a compassionate eye, and, as a former deputy editor of Harpers & Queen, is particularly good at catching the bitchiness and betrayals of fashion journalism.
But it’s the feeling that he cares about his characters and the values that Stella and Sebastian, in their different ways, are seeking, that makes this book worth reading.
It’s also good to see a local publisher building a growing list of contemporary fiction.
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