Adam Thirlwell

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	Photo: © Eamonn McCabe

Biography

Adam Thirlwell was born in 1978 and grew up in North London. He read English at New College, Oxford, and was then a prize fellow of All Souls College, Oxford from 2000 to 2007.

His first novel, Politics, was published in 2003. A book on the international art of the novel, Miss Herbert, was published in 2007 and won a 2008 Somerset Maugham Award. His second novel is The Escape (2009).

In 2003, Adam Thirlwell was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British novelists'. He lives in London.

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Genres (in alphabetical order)

Fiction

Bibliography

Politics   Cape, 2003

Miss Herbert   Cape, 2007

The Escape   Cape, 2009

Read about books by Adam Thirlwell at encompassculture.com - the British Council's book database and global online book club

Buy books by Adam Thirlwell at Amazon.co.uk

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Prizes and awards

2003   Betty Trask Award   Politics

2008   Somerset Maugham Award   Miss Herbert

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Critical Perspective

Adam Thirlwell was famously included on the 2003 Granta Best of Young British Novelists' list before his first novel had even been published. When Politics (2003) – about politics in only the most tangential sense – finally emerged, many critics, as the cliché has it, fell over themselves to express their disbelief that such a young author (Thirwell was then only 24) could have written such a witty, charming, sensitive and, at times, moving and tender treatise on morality, human relationships, and the most efficacious use of the telephone, to win personal advantage. Thirwell’s Miss Herbert (2007) – an ‘inside-out novel’ with ‘no plot, no fiction, and no finale’ – has not met with such a warm round of applause. The impish mischievous know-it-all cockiness, first demonstrated in Politics, has irritated many reviewers. It is not hard to see why. Thirwell’s second book is a work of cut and paste literary criticism masquerading as a formless novel that isn’t really a novel! It is infuriating and indulgent, rambling and awkward, but it is also fascinating. Even as you grimace and groan, you can’t help but admire Thirwell’s intellectual extravagance and chutzpah.

To those who stand in the Cervantes/Sterne/Joyce/Kundera corner of novelists – where comic irony, paradox, interruption, digression and the subversion of cliché and narrative convention are the keystones – Thirlwell’s first novel will most likely enchant. But to those who do not believe this corner is best equipped to reflect life, it will probably seem an arch ostentatious performance. Thirwell is not for readers who prefer their narrators to stay out of sight, who wish to read smoothly-plotted and straightforward fiction in the Flaubert-James-Eliot axis of realism. He is for those who believe the absurd is one of the chief governors of our experience. He is for the ironisers.

Politics begins with a scene of bondage and anal sex: this is designed to appeal to those who like to get annoyed about any transgression of the polite, restrained and reticent boundaries of the novel. Nana is a ‘suburban girl, the only daughter of a rich goy man.’ She is ‘cosseted, unmetropolitan.’ She is also a ‘non-talker,’ has an ‘uneasy prettiness,’ and is a ‘methodical fantasist.’ Her boyfriend Moshe has ‘power and breeding’ – after all his ‘father was on board the SS Shalom on its maiden voyage in 1964.’ Moshe is a ‘nervous sadist, a shy sodomite.’ An actor by trade, he is the ‘sketchy one, the sardonic one, the oddball cool.’ Anjali, Moshe’s friend and fellow actor, makes this two a three. Anjali is ‘slimmish, shortish, darkish,’ and can be ‘interested in anyone,’ but is ‘more gay than straight.’ This three inevitably struggles with its threeness, until a new two emerges – which may or may not be a better arrangement all round.

Politics is not a titillating fiction – at least, it is not just a titillating fiction. As the intrusive, omniscient narrator informs us, this book is really ‘about goodness … being kind.’ With its interest in morality, philosophical speculation and sexual relationships, Politics is clearly influenced by the work of Milan Kundera; to people like me who are more than happy to see other writers entering into a conversation with his style, this is a good thing. Thirlwell’s book is conspicuously clever, the author enjoys his own erudition – peppering his narrative with asides on Hitler, Mao, Stalin and the surrealists. There is a cheek to the novel which would probably appeal to Lars Von Trier. Those congenitally predisposed to abhor this sort of thing as showy and arrogant – and there are many of those around – will think that it is all done for effect. But if a writer is something other than a distracter from life’s concerns, everything is done for effect. It all depends on whether you think the word ‘effect’ is a positive one or not; whether you believe in style. Another of Thirwell’s ‘effects’ – and a very effective effect it is – is his dialogue: he gets the rhythms and inflections, the blind allies and repetitions of day-to-day conversation, spot on.

Politics – bedroom farce, monograph on the meaning of a moral act, dance around the modern fear of meaning, is, at its centre – like every comedy worth its salt - serious. It is also full of arresting conceits and asides:

 ‘Breaking up with someone is rather like a show trial. There is a general pretence of justice and reason. And the person doing all the breaking up accepts all responsibility. He or she makes a false confession.’

Some have criticised the novel for its lack of plot. But there is a plot! Things happen. People meet, they get on, then they don’t. This is a story. There are beginnings, middles, an ending of sorts. It’s just that the order is jumbled, distorted, fragmented: but it is there! That the plot is not showgirls and explosions and declarations of love in the rain to the sound of syrup, does not mean that there is not one. All it means is that it is closer to lived experience. And further from cliché. And, therefore, much closer to what I imagine Thirlwell is attempting to do: to pin down aspects of real life in fiction, in invented comic truth. Thirwell refuses to be satisfied with the commonplace of A-Z plotting and that is admirable.

Given that Politics was translated into 30 languages it is no surprise that Miss Herbert is much taken with translation. The Miss Herbert of the title, the niece of Flaubert’s governess, worked with the French author on the first translation of Madame Bovary, now lost. At the end of the book, printed upside down or the right way up depending on how you look at it, is Thirwell’s translation of Nabokov’s Mademoiselle O. Miss Herbert is ‘a book of Novels, Romances & their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes.’ No expense has been spared on the book’s production – lavish is very much the word – the hardback edition of Miss Herbert comes complete with black and white photographs, a thin red satin-like bookmark attached to the spine, chapter headings in red print and blow-up reproductions of the title pages of War and Peace, Madame Bovary and Ulysses scattered throughout. The book is a disquisition on style; an exploration of possible methods of translation; and an enquiry into novelistic approaches to real life. It is also the story of the novelists the author evidently admires. Thirwell’s book is a war on the sentimental, the romantic, the lyrical; a defence of the comedy of the novel – which, in Thirlwell’s opinion, is the means by which this ‘international art form’ can best approach real life. The fundamental problem with his style – ‘hip’ and ‘highbrow’, ‘learned’ and ‘streetwise’ – is that it is all but impossible to take anything he says seriously. But then that is part of the fun.

Miss Herbert does not have the elegant necessity of Politics. It can be annoying at times. It repeats itself and some of its arguments are wilfully vague to the point of having no meaning. But it is also an audacious piece of work unafraid to imitate or initiate. Part of its appeal is that it causes disagreement; you find and wonder at inconsistency and the relationship between the accidental and the deliberate. Thirwell, you think, is much too smart to have left anything to chance. What ultimately emerges from a reading of it is a picture of a novelist in love with novels; who believes in Nabokov’s marvellous formulation that a good novel is ‘the dazzling combination of drab parts.’ Like Paul Auster, Thirwell luxuriates in stories about the makers of stories; he loves to speculate on the multiform contingencies which form (his) history of the novel. None of this is encouraged in a culture more comfortable with the visual and the musical. In fact, many consider it to be the very definition of pretence. But there is no more reason to not take books seriously than there is football, politics or cars. This is a book then for litterateurs, particularly those with a sense of humour.

Garan Holcombe, 2007

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Contact information

Publisher (General enquiries) Jonathan Cape Ltd Random House UK Ltd 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London  SW1V 2SA England Tel: +44 (0)20 7840 8539 Fax: +44 (0)20 7932 0077 http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/

Agent Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd 20 Powis Mews London  W11 1JN England Tel: +44 (0)20 7221 3717 Fax: +44 (0)20 7229 9084 http://www.rcwlitagency.co.uk

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Related links

www.aretemagazine.com

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