Tony Heyes (contact) lives in
Greater Manchester, England, with his partner of 31 years.Editor's Note: As I've
indicated, while this newsletter is for the small press and independent
writer, I will gladly accept reviews of books from traditional
publishers.
A Review by Tony Heyes
Tommy’s Tale by Alan Cumming, Regan Books 2002,
ISBN 0-06-039444-7
Alan Cumming first achieved national fame in Britain by co-starring in, and co-writing, The High Life for TV. In it he played Sebastian Flyte, a campily acerbic flight attendant on the fictitious Air Scotia (motto "Dinna be afeart. Grab life by the nuts" which, being translated, means "do not be afraid, apprehend life by the fundamentals".) It was a short series and he gave a hilarious performance. Immensely talented, Mr. Cumming is a successful film actor and won a Tony for his performance as Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway.
It was with pleasurable anticipation that I took up Tommy’s Tale. The eponymous Tommy is a photographer’s assistant who is rapidly approaching his thirtieth birthday. A bisexual, he has become broody and wants a child. His closest friends are his flatmates, Sadie and Bobby and his lover, Charlie, to whose son Tommy is devoted. The little boy is anxious that Tommy and Charlie should form a permanent relationship so that he can have two dads and Charlie can have a reliable partner. By the end of the story Tommy has "accidentally" fathered a child, subsequently aborted, by an old flame and conceived another, eagerly anticipated, by Sadie. All the five main characters end up living together happily ever after in a large house.
The book is written in the first person and Tommy makes it clear at the outset that he will not be calling a spade a spade; rather, he intends to call it a bloody shovel. Tommy is promiscuous with both sexes and his life seems to be a succession of drug-fuelled excesses, described in the most basic Anglo-Saxon with rather more graphic detail than the reader, or at least this reader, requires. The story is further held up by the periodic insertion of fairy tales, intended to be parables that have a bearing on the tale, arguments for the life-enhancing nature of recreational drug use, and periods of list-making introspection. Throughout the tone is relentlessly flippant.
Therein lies the problem. It is difficult to decide for whom the book is intended. A basically winning and interesting plot is buried under a superfluity of banter, drug advocacy and a seeming desire to shock. Is it meant to be an every day story of modern suburban man, or soft porn? One is reminded of the behaviour of a child who has just learned a new swear-word – "Oo, aren’t I awful!" This is a pity because Mr. Cumming has a keen sense of humour and a sharp eye for the foibles and petty hypocrisies of every day life. With a bit more subtlety and a lot more restraint this could have been a much funnier and more engaging novel. Messages are perhaps best, and more entertainingly, delivered subliminally rather than full frontally.