The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills

Magnus Mills has been hovering around the edges of my reading consciousness for some time, including having read two of his novels - The Maintenance of Headway (good, but didn't quite work for me) and All Quiet on the Orient Express (much better) - but I've always felt that I could really love a Mills novel, given the right novel and the right timing.  Well, about three years ago my then-housemate Mel gave me The Restraint of Beasts (1998) - where better to re-start with Mills than with his first novel?  (N.B. Mel, now that I've finally read the book you got me for my birthday in 2010, will you buy me books again?)

Our narrator is anonymous (which I confess I hadn't noticed until I read the Wikipedia page for the novel) and has just become the foreman of a Scottish fencing company, led by the domineering Donald and contentedly useless Robert.  He is a foreman of a small team - Gang no.3 - which consists of just three people, including himself.  The others are Tam and Rich - inseparable but taciturn, fairly lazy, and undemonstrative.  Having been introduced to his team (and discovering that he is replacing Tam in the foreman position), the narrator and his colleagues are sent off to fix the fence of a local farmer, which has been erected poorly.

If this is all sounding rather dull, then I should let you know - the activities of the heroes (or lack thereof) are determinedly boring.  They put up fences.  They travel to England to do so, and vary the monotony of hammering in posts only with trips to the local pubs, which provide almost no incident, and are generally almost empty.

One of the things studying English for so long has enabled me to do, I hope, is identify how a writer creates certain effects or atmosphere.  I hope Stuck-in-a-Book generally shows that sort of insight into a novel, or at least tries to.  But with Mills and The Restraint of Beasts (which is my favourite of the three I've read so far), I am almost entirely unable to say why it works.  Here is a sample paragraph for you...

Their pick-up truck was parked at the other side of the yard.  They'd been sitting in the cab earlier when I went past on my way to Donald's office.  Now, however, there was no sign of them.  I walked over and glanced at the jumble of tools and equipment lying in the back of the vehicle.  Everything looked as though it had been thrown in there in a great hurry.  Clearly it would all need sorting out before we could do anything, so I got in the truck and reversed round to the store room.  Then I sat and waited for them to appear.  Looking around the inside of the cab I noticed the words 'Tam' and 'Rich' scratched on the dashboard.  A plastic lunch box and a bottle of Irn-Bru lay on the shelf.

And, believe me, things get technical.  I've learnt more about putting up fences than I'd ever imagined I'd know.   (Fyi, they're usually being built to pen in animals - the restraint of beasts, y'see.  Excellent title.)  Mills worked as a fencer himself for some years, so you could be forgiven for thinking this was turning into an odd autobiography.

But, in amongst this, occasionally bizarre or momentous things DO happen, and they are treated with as casually and matter-of-factly as the tedium of standing in the rain with a fence hammer.  That is one of the reasons I loved this novel - I love surreal and black humour, but I hate anything disgusting, unduly frightening, macabre, or viciously unkind (so psychological thrillers almost always off the menu.)  Mills lets the moments of darkness become instantly surreal simply by giving us a narrator who does not see the difference between life-changing, terrible incidents and the everyday minutiae of the construction industry.  (Note that I'm deliberately avoiding telling you what these dark moments are, because I don't want to spoil the surprise!)

Somehow, throughout plain and 'deceptively simple' (sorry, had to be done) prose, Mills expertly implies growing menace and claustrophobia.  The humour is still there - never laugh-out-loud funny, but always a dry, bleak humour - but the darkness seems to be spreading.  And from the opening pages, the reader is pulled from page to page, without almost nothing happening... how?  I don't know what is in the writing that makes it work so well, as tautly engaging as a detective novel.  It's obvious that All Quiet on the Orient Express was written after The Restraint of Beasts, because it follows a similar premise and style, but with a firmer structure.  And yet I refer The Restraint of Beasts, perhaps because it is more daring in its lack of structure.

And what is it all about?  I haven't the foggiest.  The ending (which, again, I shan't spoil) isn't conclusive at all, but dumps a whole load of clues about the meaning of the novel.  I wondered whether it might be a metaphor for fascism, or perhaps communism, or... well, I don't know.  It doesn't much matter, and I'd have been rather cross if it turned out to be a heavy-handed metaphor for anything (only George Orwell can get away with that), so I'm happy to let it be simply an excellent, bewildering, disturbing placid novel.  If you've yet to try Mills, start here.

It's been a while since I did a 'Others who got Stuck into...' section, because I have a terrible memory, so...


Others who got Stuck into The Restraint of Beasts...

"He is able to turn the ordinary into something sinister in a way that defies description, so that you're never quite sure whether a terrible event is going to happen or whether the author is just playing with your sense of the dramatic." - Kim, Reading Matters

"There are a number of things said that seem to be evasions or euphemisms that are not explained. Everything is sinister and suspect." - Kate, Nose in a Book

"It has an undercurrent of mystery and black farce that I felt it could have done without, as it remains an unresolved and unlikely subplot." - Read More Fiction

All Quiet on the Orient Express

Fellow bloggers, I'm sure you know this feeling - you read a book, enjoyed it, put it on one side to write about... and by the time you get to writing about it, almost all the details have left your head. Right? That's not a very inspiring opening to a blog review, but it will set your expectations at the right level as I start to talk about All Quiet on the Orient Express (1999) by Magnus Mills, which I read, ahem, last November.

About a year ago I wrote a review of Magnus Mills' The Maintenance of Headway, and my general opinion was that, although that novel didn't work for me, I felt that there was something about Mills. And that I definitely would like something else by him. In stepped Annabel, who lent me All Quiet on the Orient Express... which I had so long that she said I could pass it on to a charity shop... oops, sorry Annabel...

The unnamed narrator is coming to the end of a camping holiday at Mr. Parker's camp site in the Lake District, preparing to head off on the Orient Express (which I think might have been thrown in just for that wonderful title) when the novel opens. That seems a good place to start.

"I thought I'd better catch you before you go," he said. "Expect you'll be leaving today, will you?"

"Hadn't planned to," I replied.

"A lot of people choose to leave on Monday mornings."

"Well, I thought I'd give it another week, actually. The weather seems quite nice."

"So you're staying on then?"

"If that's alright with you."

"Of course it is," he said. "You're welcome to stay as long as you like."

It seems a good deal, to our narrator, when Mr. Parker offers to knock a bit off the rent in return for Narrator (as I shall call him, for want of an alternative. Unless he is named and I somehow missed it) doing the odd handyman job here and there.

The 'here and there' becomes more frequent, and the tasks more laborious. Most of them seem to involve Mr. Parker's endless supply of green paint - everything from fences to boats apparently require coating in the stuff. Everything is on account, as it were, and Narrator's involvement with the family and the community grows deeper and deeper... whether he'd like it to or not. He joins a forceful darts team, he becomes a regular at the pub (which doesn't always have his favourite drink; nor does the grocer have the biscuits he wants) and, all the time, the Parker family get him to perform more and more handyman jobs... All Quiet on the Orient Express is a bizarre cautionary tale for those (like myself) who find it impossible to say 'no'...

What makes Magnus Mills' writing so enjoyable is its eccentricity. The actual characters and events are surprisingly grounded, when you consider them in the abstract. There are no Dickensian grotesques (even the man who constantly wears a cracker paper-crown turns out to have a fairly reasonable excuse) nor are the motivations of characters unduly wacky - but the dialogue certainly is. It is spare, yet like the excerpt above, it is often repetitive and confusing, trailing round and round in circles without getting anywhere. Lots of unnecessary questions and characters repeating what the others say. It all adds to the claustrophobia of the place, and is done cleverly - so that it gives this effect without annoying the reader.

If I just-about liked The Maintenance of Headway, then I definitely much liked All Quiet on the Orient Express. I still feel that there is potential for me to love Mills, and I have The Restraint of Beasts on my shelf that will hopefully reach that standard. But even without being completely in love with this novel, I think it is incredibly good - and Mills' writing is so different from almost all other contemporary writers. The only modern comparison I can think of is Edward Carey (see below). It's the sort of quirky, strange-but-not-macabre-or-silly writing that I yearn to find, and so rarely do.

Thanks Annabel for lending it to me; sorry I've had it so long! If anyone who likes or loves Mills can recommend similar authors to me (less silly than Pratchett, and not macabre at all, please) then I'd be delighted.


Books to get Stuck into:

Observatory Mansions - Edward Carey: I've recommended Alva & Irva so often that I thought I should make a change. Francis works as a 'living statue' and is also horribly selfish, stealing/collecting objects that people love. Totally surreal, but brilliant.

The Skin Chairs - Barbara Comyns: not quite the same style, but enough odd, quirky elements - from those skin chairs on - to make worth suggesting in the same breath as Mills.

You wait all day for one book about buses...

...and, to be honest, there's still only one book about buses that comes along. Bloomsbury sent me a copy of The Maintenance of Headway by Magnus Mills ages and ages ago, probably around the invention of the first bus, but somehow I've only just read it. Such is the state of my tbr mountains (which are already looking nervous about the idea of moving house in three months' time.)

The Maintenance of Headway is a very short book (you know how I like short books) all about the politics of bus driving and the interaction of bus drivers. I really like novels about unusual professions - not that bus driving is inherently unusual, it's just unusual for a novel to focus on a bus driver - and so was intrigued about how this one would work.

Well, the unnamed narrator works amongst a group of fellow bus drivers who must adhere to the various Bus Driving Rules. Mills was apparently a bus driver himself, so he should know what they are. Chief amongst them - and iterated as chapter headings throughout the book - is 'There's no excuse for being early'. And then, of course, there is the Maintenance of Headway, intended to stop that phenomenon where three buses turn up at once. These rules are sprinkled throughout the novel, and I'm certainly going to feel more sympathetic next time I hop on a bus - but any action that came alongside was so understated that I think I missed it. There are some interesting touches about the hierarchy of driving, about drivers' various idiosyncrasies, and some nostalgia for old-fashioned buses. All understated. Understated seems to be Mills' thing.

I hadn't heard of Magnus Mills when I received this novel, but everyone else seems to have - he was nominated for the Booker, and has all sorts of accolades on the back of the copy I have. Indeed, he is variously compared to PG Wodehouse, The Office, Brave New World, the Coen Brothers, and Alan Bennett. What an intriguing mix. What do they all have in common? That they're all funny - and that's the thing, I just didn't find The Maintenance of Headway particularly funny. Interestingly, the one bit I wanted to quote is the bit a few other reviews have quoted:

There was a man standing in the road holding a large key. He was surrounded by a circle of traffic cones, in front of which was a red and white sign: ROAD CLOSED. I pulled my bus up and spoke to him through the window.

‘Morning,’ I said.

‘Morning,’ he replied.

‘Busy?’

‘Will be in a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m just about to relieve the pressure.’

His van was parked nearby. He was from a water company.

‘Would it be possible to let me go past before you start?’ I enquired.

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘I’ve already put my cones out. Can’t really bring them all in again.’

I counted the cones. There were seven in total.

It had some interesting quirks, but it wasn't quirky in the way that someone like Edward Carey is... somehow it just meandered. For a short novel, it went an awful lot of nowhere. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy it - I think it would be closer to the point to say that I didn't understand it, or tune into its wavelength. Even after reading two brilliant reviews by Kim and John, I know I'm missing something - and I'd like to read some of his earlier novels to see if that 'something' doesn't elude me there.

Magnus Mills has a whole raft of interesting-looking novels in fact - All Quiet on the Orient Express, although I know little about it except its title, has already found its way into my Amazon wishlist. Although The Maintenance of Headway didn't bowl me over, I'll certainly be looking out for more Mills in the future...