Number 37 - Oxblood - Tom Benn

 This month's book group read is this family sage set in the mean streets of Manchester. It follows the wives and children of a family of crime lords in Wythenshawe from the 50s to the 80s.

When the story opens, it's 1984. the husbands are dead in a car crash a few years earlier. The daughter (Jan) is 14 and completely out of control evidenced very strongly by the fact that she's recently had a baby of her own and spends three quarters of her segments in the book giving sexual favours to any man or boy who so much as glances at her. The oldest son (Kelly) has just been released from Strangeways after doing time for a drugs offense.

Their mother, Carol, is still mourning her lost lover who was beaten to death by her husband and father-in-law 14 years ago when they were released from prison themselves for another violent crime.

The grandmother, Nedra, wife to the ex-head of the syndicate now looks after the local children to make ends meet but still thinks her family rule the area.

The style of writing is brutal and frequently deliberately vague.  There are pages I had to read three times to try to work out what was going on.

There are occasional flashes of brilliance in the writing, but overall I didn't get on at with this book.

I read primarily for pleasure.  This is not a book to read for pleasure.  It's too miserablist and bleak. That's not necessarily an issue as long as there's enough to admire about the writing, or the characters are compelling enough to drag you through the book regardless, or the storyline is strong enough to drag you. Money by Martin Amis was a great example of all three of those. 

This isn't.

Amis gave us an astounding display of literary ventriloquism and presented us with an unlikable but compelling character who a savvy reader would see was being played for a fool, and this reader at least found the tightening grip of the trap Amis's patsy was caught in to be compelling in much the same way as watching a car crash in slow motion. 

Benn gives us writing stylised to the point of obfuscation. I didn't find much to admire in it for the most part, although, as mentioned there were some flashes of greatness. The characters were all equally unlikable and the plot, such as there is, was kitchen sink drama with some underage shenanigans. I had no emotional connection to any of them, and creepily, the only man in the book presented with any degree of sympathy was the 30 year old teacher who took 14 year old Jan for a dirty weekend in the lakes.

Did it accurately portray time and place? That's a matter of opinion, but I personally didn't find it particularly convincing. The writing was too off-putting in its weird syntax which is nothing like I've heard in 30 years of living in Manchester myself.

I scored this 5/10 at the book group meeting last night and I think I might have been generous.

5 pages of glowing reviews before you start the book aren't always correct.