In the absence of heroes

Anthony McCarten – Vintage - $28.99

Reviewed on Radio New Zealand National today.

Anthony McCarten started his working life as a journalist in New Plymouth but after a couple of years flagged it away to go to university where he gained an arts degree. Fifteen years ago he ended up in London and he has been there ever since.

The good news is that he is coming “home” in May as a guest of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival where he will no doubt be talking about the just published title we are talking about today.

In the Absence of Heroes is a sequel to his earlier novel “The Death of a Superhero” and again features the Delpe family who live in “hyper-tense, hyper-populated” North London but who have decided to move to the country to try and reconnect with each other. This is McCarten again exploring how we are living our increasingly complex modern lives, and specifically the impact of the Internet on the breakdown of family relationships.

The book opens with this quote:

50% of the people online lie about their age, weight, job, marital status and gender.

20% of people going online will experience clear negative impacts to their life.

Use of the Internet is a contributing factor in nearly 50% of all relationship and family problems.

11% of people online are becoming compulsive or addicted.

Women are now online more than men.

The Delpe family is transformed by the internet when Jim, the father and husband, and successful lawyer, searching for his run-away son, enters the son's online world of computer gaming and becomes addicted himself to a game called “Life of Lore”. Jim finds himself cast in the role of his son's cyber-space saviour while the son, in the real world, decides whether he will repay the favour.

Meanwhile Renata, mother and wife, has taken up a secret internet relationship with an anonymous stranger and she has become increasingly distant from Jim and the couple’s surviving son Jeff. I should mention for those who haven’t read the earlier title, The Death of a Superhero”, that in that book another son, Donny, dies from cancer. So when we meet them in this new book the family have already been cast into a state of grief and isolation from each other as a result of that death.

I have to say that although I greatly admire McCarten’s writing - his narrative, dialogue, use of satire, plot development and characterisation are all most impressive - I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. Just too many side issues along with a few unnecessary characters (Jim’s sister and the builder working on their country home for example),coupled with lashings of angst and unhappiness, and who wants to read about a dysfunctional unhappy bunch of people and the disintegration of a marriage? Not me!

About the author:

Anthony McCarten's novels have been translated into 14 languages. His collection of short stories, A Modest Apocalypse, was shortlisted in the Heinemann-Reed Fiction Award in 1991. Death Of A Superhero won the 2008 Austrian Youth Literature Prize and was a finalist for the German Youth Literature Prize. He has published five novels to date and also written numerous stage plays, including co-writing with Stephen Sinclair the work he is probably best-known for, the world-wide success Ladies Night, which won both the prestigious Moliere prize and the Meilleure Piece Comique in 2001. While most of his novels have been turned into successful feature films by other film-makers, McCarten directed Show of Hands himself, as well as his adaption of his play Via Satellite.

His work, (from Wikipedia):

Novels

Spinners Random House New Zealand (1999) Harper Perennial (US) (2001)

The English Harem Picador (2002), reprinted (film-tie-in) Alma Books (2006)

Death of a Superhero Alma Books (2006, 2007)

Show Of Hands (2008) Diogenes (Germ.), Simon and Shuster (US), Random House (NZ)

In The Absence Of Heroes (2012) Random House (NZ), Diogenes (Germ.)

Brilliance (2012) Alma Books (UK)

Films

Nocturne in a Room (1992) (Short)

Fluff (1995) (Short)

Via Satellite (1999)

The English Harem (2005) (TV Adaptation)

Show of Hands (2008)

Death Of A Superhero (2011)

Plays

Invitation to a Second Class Carriage. Depot Theatre, Wellington, 1984.

Yellow Canary Mazurka. Circa, 1987.

Ladies Night With Stephen Sinclair. Mercury, 1987.

Pigeon English. Playwrights’ Workshop, 1988; Depot, 1989.

Weed. Circa, 1990.

Via Satellite. Circa, 1991, and the winner of the NZ Listener Best Play and Wellington Theatre Critics’ Best Production awards for 1991.

Hang on a Minute, Mate. Downstage, 1992.

Ladies’ Night 2. With Stephen Sinclair. Mercury, 1992.

FILTH (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong). Circa, 1995.

Four Cities aka "Continental Breakfast". Los Angeles, 1996.