A Season In Purgatory - The worst good book review ever

On my summer holiday staying at an old house in the remote countryside I'm perusing the bookshelves when my eyes fall upon A Season In Purgatory by an American writer called Dominick Dunne. On the cover a quote by Nicholas Coleridge writing for the Daily Mail offers a bold endorsement: "I doubt anyone this year will write a more satisfying or beautifully observed novel". I check inside and note the book was published in 1993. This book, according to Coleridge, is more beautifully observed than Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. It shits all over Sebastian Faulks. According to Coleridge.

Does the cover illustration perhaps contradict his claim, I wonder? A broken baseball bat, smeared in blood, propped up on the stairs of a porch. "Satisfying."? Surely some mistake here? But no. On the inside cover are more unbelievable quotes. "There isn't a single tranche of dialogue in this book that doesn't sound authentic." Not a single tranche, you say? Fucking hell. Tatler magazine reckons "people in the know will be reading A Season In Purgatory this summer."  The Daily Express simply states "a compelling read". Fair play, Daily Express. I believe you. Really I do.

This is going to be quite a holiday read, I think excitedly. Quickly leafing through to get an idea of whether the prose is my cup of tea the first passage I turn to is this: "he dropped to his knees. There in front of him on the ground was Winifred Utley. She was wearing the same pink dress she had on at the dance at the club, but it was pushed up on her so part of the skirt covered her face. Her panties were pulled down to her knees.  I reached out to touch her but her face and head were covered in blood."

Beautifully observed. Really fucking beautiful. Touching.

I turn back to page one. A quote read aloud in a courtroom has the defendant allegedly asking the victim on the night of her murder, "do you mind dancing with a man with an erection?" 

What a totally fucking authentic tranche of dialogue. I challenge anybody, ANYBODY, to suggest that tranche of dialogue isn't authentic.

The golden nuggets of written English just keep on coming. On page two, PAGE FUCKING TWO, we are told that the narrator is at the urinal when Constant (that's the main deviant's name...I'll come back to this later) was "standing there next to me when, suddenly, without speaking a word, he turned and aimed the strong steady stream of his urine in my direction, soaking my blazer and trousers."

A piss attack. On the second fucking page of this masterpiece. You might be thinking page two is too early for a man to be pissing on another man's suit. Well, fuck you. It's not too early. It's the  perfect point in the novel for that to happen.

Let me fill you in on the main plot so you don't think this book is just a urine soaked rape fest (it is that, but it's also so much more than that...) The narrator, Harrison Burns, begins the tale in 1972. Aged 17, he is best friends with a rich spoilt brat, Constant. This rich brat waits in the woods after a dance and batters a 15 year old girl to death with a baseball bat after attempting to rape her but failing to establish or maintain an erection. We later find out that both he and his father have dick problems which fuels their loathing of women and causes them to repeatedly make attempts at rape. Burns is bribed by the rich kid's father to help cover up the murder which he does for years before finally buckling to guilt and testifying against his former friend at a huge high profile court case. At which Constant is acquitted. 

Whoops I just ruined the whole book. But it really doesn't matter. You're never going to read it. 

Woah , woah, woah I hear you say. That's all a bit nonchalantly reeled off... There's some heavy shit in their, man. Well, yeah. The author is a master of nonchalance. Take the scene where the rich kid's dad is empathising with his son's dick problems…

 "'well, as we know, there's no anger like the anger of a soft dick', said Gerald. Gerald's enthusiasm for his favorite son never wavered". Soft dick? Anger? Just a second…. being abused as a child. Having a loved one killed in a war. Being born deaf and blind. Being autistic. Being born in the poverty of a Mumbai slum. Being black in the Deep South in the 1930s. THESE things are probably worthy of anger. A soft dick? Take some fucking Viagra. Surely?

"Pa, you're not taking this seriously enough"' the tranche of dialogue continues... "'I admire a man with a healthy appetite for pussy', Gerald said. 'I'm not sure how healthy his appetite is Pa, we might just have a sicko on our hands here.' Well, duh. The cunt's bludgeoned to death a 15year old girl with a fucking rounders bat. "'Constant's no sicko', said Gerald firmly, " let me talk to him." 

And, I don't know about you, but I find that passage both authentic AND beautifully observed. Just like Nicholas Coleridge of the Daily Mail.

Did I mention that the villain's name is Constant? Bit of a weird name right? A word usually used as an adverb or an adjective. Not a name. But it's just one of many, many stupid fucking names in this beautifully observed book. Here's a shortlist of the best ones...

Captain Quish ('chief Quish' for short)

Piggy French (the clue's in the name)

Bridey Nora (the clue's in the name)

Esme Bland (the clue's in the name)

Eloise Brazen (the clue's in the name)

Fruity Suarez (racist?) 

Puff Rooney (I shit you not)

Rupert Du Pithon (get the fuck outta here! No, honestly...)

Cleanie Cleanie (a household cleaning maid, go figure)

Fatty Malloy (is he fat? Yep, he's fucking fat alright)

Weegie Somerset (sounds like a ghost story set at a traffic lights in Yeovil)

Johnny Fuselli (a bit like the pasta)

I am not making these names up. The author made these names up. To be fair to him, there is currently a member of the Great Britain equestrian team called Piggy French. Coincidence or unbelievable artistic foresight? I think you'll find it's the latter. The man's a fucking visionary.

The book unfolds dramatically into a hornet's nest of debauchery and, basically, evil. But there's still time for a legitimate sex scene along the way. At one point a woman named Kitt drops to her knees in the living room of her elderly mother's house and takes Harrison's penis in her mouth. (Not my words). Her sister walks in and sees them. Disgusted she says "cover your breasts Kitt, how could you stoop so low?" 

Er...how else is she gonna suck his dick? Right? 

But now is not the time or place for semantics. It's an incredibly authentic tranche of dialogue. All the tranches of dialogue in this book are really fucking authentic. 

A beautifully observed scene in which Harrison, the hero, is pulled underwater by a man in a wetsuit is rounded off with our hero smashing his heel into the assailant's nose, breaking it and "clouding the water with blood". The action takes place at a location called Shinnecock Bay. Lovely stuff.

As well as making light of disabilities ("if you weren’t a cripple I'd kick the shit out of you Jerry") not to mention HIV and AIDS in a couple of beautifully observed bits of dialogue, the book also deals with other heavyweight issues: Rape, murder, high school expulsion, theft, lies, adultery, bribery, more rape, sexual assaults on minors, more rape. Lots and lots of rape. This book is like Jilly Cooper's 'Riders' but without the riding and with lots of raping. He should have called it 'Rapers'. The publishing house might have objected to that I suppose.

If this novel were satirising traditionally hostile literary depictions of the vulgar, amoral American super-rich it might have worked, if only as a mildly amusing trite comic novella. But it isn't. It's serious and allegedly based on a true life case involving one of the younger members of the Kennedy family. The problem is it's written by a man who just might have got an erection while writing it, for an audience of readers who just might get an erection while reading it.

The final line is beautifully observed. The police finally discover the baseball bat murder weapon hidden in a plastic bag in a lake in Conneticut where Johnny Fuselli assured Burns it would be. Fuselli, now dead, is emotionally eulogised by the narrator. "Salvation at last. Purgatory behind him, I know now that Johnny Fuselli has ascended into the Kingdom of Heaven." 

And if that's not beautifully observed then, Jesus Christ, I don't know what is.