The Escape [Hardcover]

Fans of Milan Kundera or Philip Roth will appreciate this clever, well written, melancholic farce of a story, but it's not a novel that engages the reader due to the lack of sympathetic characters.

When we first meet seventy-eight year-old Raphael Haffner, he is hiding in a spa hotel closet watching a twenty-something year-old yoga instructor (who knows he's there) having sex with her boyfriend (who doesn't). Haffner is a British, Jewish former banker who is staying at the spa in Central Europe while on a mission to reclaim his dead wife's villa that in nearby that was confiscated by the Nazis in the war. Thirlwell's narrator, some fifty years younger than Haffner (ie the age of the author) describes the aging libertine Haffner as "lustful, selfish, vain - an entirely commonplace man". Charming.

But it's not really a plot-driven novel. Interspersed with trying to develop two affairs - one with the ever flexible yoga teacher, Zinka, and another with a middle aged, married resident of the spa - with varying amounts of success, are Haffner's recollections about his Jewish childhood in North London, fighting in Africa in the war, his banking career and various loves including his deceased wife, jazz and cricket amongst other things.

I confess to being in two minds about this book. There are bits I enjoyed and bits I found terribly frustrating. Haffner is not a likeable character by any means and, as even one of his friends notes "Haffner always thought there was so much more to Haffner than anyone else ever thought". This is a bit of a problem. Haffner is a symbol of the greed and selfishness of modern-day life, but the overall tone of the book is that of a melancholic farce. There's much reflection on a life either lived or wasted, about the beauty of defeat and about escaping from your past.

On the plus side, the writing is highly intelligent in places, and Thirlwell shows great skill in his use of words, and the sex scenes - often so excruciating to read in novels - are genuinely funny. Thirlwell's first book, Politics, gained something of a reputation for its sexual content and clearly this is a subject still very much on the author's mind. I found myself admiring the writing more than enjoying the book though. Partly because of the endless repetition of Haffner's name, I felt that I was kept at a distance from the story rather than being engaged in it.

If the name `Haffner' has made you think of a similarly named individual (and yes, the joke is made explicit in the book) then this also hints further at the `cleverness' of the writing. In a postscript to the book, Thirlwell identifies 46 writers from whom the book contains "quotations, some of them slightly adapted". This list includes, amongst others Thomas Mann, Groucho Marx, Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare and George Eliot. Academically, this is clever but perhaps it accounts for the slightly cold feeling I got from reading the book. In terms of style though, there are hints of several writers who I do like, including Milan Kundera, John Updike's Rabbit and Philip Roth's Portnoy, none of whom feature on Thirlwell's list. Thirlwell's writing isn't derivative as such, but the overriding sense was that he puts me in mind of some great authors without reaching that level himself ....yet.

At one point, the narrator muses "but no, just right now, I'm not quite in the mood for Haffner, and his confusions", and I'm afraid I sort of knew what he meant.

Adam Thirlwell's second novel, The Escape, comes garlanded with praise from the highly respected Milan Kundera. Whether this is in part due to the fact that Thirlwell interviewed Kundera in 2000 for the New Statesman is uncertain. But Thirlwell does have outstanding credentials. He was named as one of Granta magazine's twenty 'Best of young British novelists' back in 2003, and his journalism - such as the aforementioned Kundera piece - is intelligent and finely written.

His first novel, Politics (2003), was lauded as 'one of the funniest, most stylish and utterly original debuts in years' by The Times, and Thirlwell was hailed as a prodigy by The New York Times. A.S. Byatt declared Politics ' a work of art' in The Financial Times. Thirlwell's second book, Miss Herbert (2007), won the 2008 Somerset Maugham Award. A non fiction collection, The Delighted States, was published in 2008.

Which is why I had such high expectations for The Escape. The novel follows the sexual adventures and musings of a 78 year-old protagonist, Raphael Haffner, in a small Alpine spa town. Haffner is an ex banker and has known considerable professional success, but personally, his record is less impressive. His marriage to his beautiful late wife Livia was punctuated by Haffner's frequent infidelities. Haffner is in the Alpine town to try and claim a villa that belonged to Livia's family which he believes he should inherit. But his inability to be ruled by his head rather than his willy causes him complications. At the start of the novel, he is poised in a bedroom wardrobe, watching the object of his lust, a gamine yoga teacher named Zinka, make love to her boyfriend. Soon afterwards, he is embroiled in somewhat reluctant passion with a married 55 year-old woman, Frau Tummel, who is (somewhat bizarrely) in love with him. So far, so John Self (Martin Amis's Money) - roll over Portnoy (Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint).

In between Haffner's shenanigans, there are flashbacks to his past with Livia and his relationship with his father, daughter Esther and grandson Benjamin. There are also musings on his past associates, his opinions and beliefs and his life in general.

In The Esape, Thirwell reminds me of Howard Jacobson, who also concentrates on self absorbed, sexually driven, middle - old aged Jewish men, often suspended in a prolonged secular-religious conflict. As with Jacobson's novels, the self indulgent drone of introspective pondering becomes irritating in The Esape; perhaps, like Jacobson, Thirlwell is either an acquired or esoteric taste. The two authors share a similar propensity for heavy duty identity conflicts wrapped in the gauzy paper of sexual frolics. Yet, as with Jacobson, who produced the contemplative and thoughtful Booker listed Kalooki Nights, Thirlwell definitely has something. It's just not employed to best use in this novel.

Not that the novel is all disappointing. There are comic interludes, such as when Zinka and Frau Tummel grimly compete for his attention at the lake:

'...Haffner maintained a casual grin...Zinka said she really had to be getting to work. Was it really necessary? asked Haffner. Frau Tummel glared at him. Yes, said Zinka, she felt so - after all, they didn't want her there, did they, interrupting them? Oh, said Haffner, he was sure that wasn't true. Was it? he asked Frau Tummel.
She didn't want to make Zinka late, said Frau Tummel.'

But for the most part, this feels like a novel without a story, a gifted writer floundering in the already well-trodden terrain of identity, ageing, intimations of mortality twinned with the desires of youth, Jewish faith and history; the reflections of a man approaching the end of his life. The lack of substance seems to be compensated for by a heavily stylized prose: Haffner is referred to repeatedly by the invisible, younger narrator; these constant references ('helpful Haffner', 'unconvinced Haffner' etc) are echoed by the chapter headings:Haffner Unbound, Haffner Amorous, Haffner Amphibious, Haffner Enraged, and so on. It becomes tiresome to read, as here:

'So often, he wanted to give up and elope from his history. The problem was in finding the right elopee. He only had Haffner. And Haffner wasn't enough.'

There is also much faux philosophising, which is equally irksome:
'Yes, because nothing in this world occurs without a backstory: and what is higher always derives from what is lower and every victory contains its own defeat.'
It's as if the term 'Pyrrhic victory' had never previously been conceived.

Thirlwell can definitely write, it just seems that in the bubble of hype following his previous successes he's become obsessed by style over substance.