Rough Music - Patrick Gale

...books on my shelf – Rough Music – I was pleased and was anticipating a pleasurable read. I was not disappointed.

The two books are both largely set in west Cornwall which must be an area that the author knows and loves; the descriptions are too rich and emotive to be other than those of a long-term fan. Both books have a woman with a mental illness amongst the central characters; both revolve around family and the strains and stresses ...
...Land’s End).

Rough Music, we learn, is a term from central Europe where the townspeople gather outside a house where there is sexual activity of which they disapprove – like adultery – and they bang pots and pans or shout or whistle to express their displeasure. There are some sexual shenanigans in this book too, but music is a deeper theme running through the book.

Most of the action takes place in a rented holiday ... more

I picked up another Patrick Gale – called ‘Notes From An Exhibition’ – and read it very quickly and with considerable pleasure. So when I noticed that I had another of his books on my shelf – Rough Music – I was pleased and was anticipating a pleasurable read. I was not disappointed.

The two books are both largely set in west Cornwall which must be an area that the author knows and loves; the descriptions are too rich and emotive to be other than those of a long-term fan. Both books have a woman with a mental illness amongst the central characters; both revolve around family and the strains and stresses – the family fault lines, as it were – which from time to time emerge. Both have a gay man as one of the central characters too, but they are for all that very different stories. Other than also, in passing, recommending it, I shall say no more about ‘Notes’.

(The ‘blurb’ in fact says that the author lives near Land’s End).

Rough Music, we learn, is a term from central Europe where the townspeople gather outside a house where there is sexual activity of which they disapprove – like adultery – and they bang pots and pans or shout or whistle to express their displeasure. There are some sexual shenanigans in this book too, but music is a deeper theme running through the book.

Most of the action takes place in a rented holiday home in Cornwall and there are two holidays there, about 30 years apart. The holiday home has been redecorated and repainted in the meantime and has been renamed and we know if we are in the 1960’s or the current decade by the name of the bungalow at the chapter heading.
This is a family drama and there are parallels and echoes between the two breaks, not least the presence of so many of the same people between the two events.

SPOILER ALERT – DON’T READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON’T WANT SOME OF THE PLOT REVEALED

In the 1960’s, it is the mother who is having an affair with her brother in law: In the 2000’s it is her son who is having an affair with his brother in law. The relationships, taking place in the same house a generation apart, are integral to the story and plot lines twist about this. The character of the mother has early-onset Alzheimer's and is not well but is not uniformly ill. At times very present, she is also sometimes thrown back into the past. This is a beautifully drawn picture. Her relationship with her own husband, father of the main character, is also beautifully drawn in all it’s somewhat dysfunctional stiltedness and is very believable. You are left wondering not why the relationship failed at times but why it ever worked at all.

I was in Devon in the period of the first holiday and playing on the beach as a little lad as the character is in this book. I also remember the journey to the West Country before the motorways were build south of Birmingham – it was a two day journey from Manchester to Torquay in the mid 60’s, with an overnight stop in Gloucestershire! – so this book brought back some actual memories for me as well as painting a picture but it is a well executed picture I think.

The characterisation is plausible and although some of it could be called predictable – like the gay man and his best ‘fag-hag’ female friend promising to marry one another if they were both still single at 40 – it was nevertheless engaging.

Most of us have had to transition from knowing our parents as seemingly omnipotent adults to realising that they are fallible, have feet of clay and can even be petulant or petty: And that process of getting to know them anew and to understand them, for better or for worse, is beautifully illustrated here.

Although I have given away some of the plot there is more I have not, some of it not revealed until the very end and I would recommend this as a good, easy read. A train journey to Cornwall or a beach somewhere and this will comfortably fill a couple of hours.

My copy was published by Harper Collins in the ‘Harper Perennial’ imprint.

ISBN: 978-0-00-655220-8
 

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