In the tradition of literary lowlifes and lushes as conceived by Charles Bukowski or Jean Rhys, Keshed is a story about an alcoholic, with a distinctive 21st-century, northern English working-class setting. Formally inventive, the ‘now’ sections of the novel are not sentences but strings of words, effective and short: ‘Rancid liquid squirting chin soggy torso peristaltic rush rapid.’ One such section opens the book, setting the uncompromising tone.
The protagonist, Sean (‘He was pissed when I met him and he hasn’t changed’), a bright, charismatic lad from an unnamed small Yorkshire town, has been to university in Manchester where he drank heavily. He then moved back home, and we meet him working as a plasterer, living to get smashed. This early part includes plenty of characteristic west Yorkshire speech – ‘Summart ter look forward ter’ – and a little levity amid the depravity.
The dreadful driving force of the book comes from wanting to join the dots between the youthful ‘then’ and the awful ‘now’. One chapter concerns Sean’s dead alcoholic uncle Terry – ‘He were his own man, Sean, just like you’ – and Sean’s own story feels doomed from that point, with what we know about intergenerational trauma and addiction.
Stu Hennigan’s excellent first book, Ghost Signs, was a non-fiction account of lockdown, when he worked as a volunteer driver delivering food parcels to the most deprived areas of Leeds. His encounters there with individuals in despair and poverty must have influenced Keshed’s world of cheap booze and rife addiction.
But Sean is not part of the underclass: he gets a posh girlfriend, a house and a job with the council, yet feels trapped. He is pulled between family life and the call of oblivion, and the latter wins because domestic life is frustrating. The premature birth of their child, for which Sean is ill-prepared, is a brilliantly stressful set piece.
Paragraphs of second person italics reveal Sean’s brutal, self-eviscerating internal voice: ‘You are weak pathetic fucking scum’ etc. We come to see a bruised soul seeking relief in the only way he knows.
Hennigan’s intense, relentless style reflects the repeating cycles of addictive behaviour. As Sean hides his drinking from his partner, we lose patience with his self-destruction, while being unable to put the book down; the reading experience itself is like a sick compulsion. We feel the central tension of wanting this guy to sort himself out while also relating to the dissatisfied, restless voice.
Many of us have known Seans in all their infuriating nihilistic glory – people for whom the trappings of ordinary life will never suffice. This portrait of the addict offers insight and ultimately empathy for a certain doomed mindset. Of course the ending brings no redemption. It’s the kind of book from which you need to recover.
Comments