IAIN BRIMSWALL: The Novels
The Zoo Keeper Trilogy
The Zoo Keeper
First published in February 2004, The Zoo Keeper follows mid-lifer and recent graduate Ellis Carmichael during a period of social research. The question of why urban poverty continues to exist is pursued using a method called experiential observation, which in the story is effected by having the protagonist take up residence in a tower block on a neglected council estate located on the periphery of an unremarkable English city. This parallels the author’s own action, and the early part of the book is semi-autobiographical. The idea for The Zoo Keeper was built on material originally intended for an academic dissertation.
There is a real sense of frustration and sometimes anger in the text; quite possibly the writing of the novel was a way of managing these feelings. The central character discovers that a burgeoning industry has grown up around social deprivation. Community development becomes the prime target of this book. One may well concur that the country’s worst housing estates seem to get no better despite the corps of development workers assigned to them, though the conclusion arrived at, that poverty is cultivated and maintained in order to produce jobs for an under-occupied middle class, is perhaps more debatable.
As a novel to be read in the normal way, The Zoo Keeper works reasonably well. The storyline, laced with humour, holds the attention while the polemical load is relieved to an extent by a chapter of questions and answers played out in the protagonist’s mind.
A crucial second character is Suzie (Su) Gardeen. An embodiment of community development as practised on the ground, she is the ‘zoo keeper’ of the title. Although the narrative supports Carmichael’s point of view, Gardeen is given her own feisty dialogue. The shaping of a character named Fiona (Fee) towards the story's end is a sign that more was to follow.
In January 2008, a new edition became available, an addition to the Urban Rim Publications list. Unusually for a novel, but reflecting the book's social complexion, a thematic index is included.
Missed Chapters
Missed Chapters, published three years to the day after The Zoo Keeper, demonstrates a calmer and more rounded writing style. While the earlier novel saw itself essentially aimed at a facet of social organisation, this novel operates at the personal level. Community development provides the backcloth but the story relates the pivotal life stages of the main character, Su Gardeen.
Concerned that it would be ‘very difficult to impossible’ for a male writer to attempt to relate female thought processes, especially over time, Brimswall visualised his protagonist as a mosaic, put together from observations of different real women. The result: a believable dynamic personality forged for the page.
A busy ‘real time’ storyline is put on hold at intervals to accommodate single chapters that describe progressively distant past episodes. By this means, the reinvented woman who is Gardeen shares her search for self-understanding, though the reader can only guess where it might all be leading. Furthermore, a seemingly natural end to the story is not in fact the end – an insert announces one more chapter. Within the chapter, the above structure is justified as Gardeen brings her own brand of closure to events that have troubled her.
The well-crafted novel generally has a lightness of tone. However, some weighty themes are presented. An example is early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease. The principal one is a discussion, threading through the book, of the paedophile condition. A curious clutch of ideas, mostly relating to race and religion, is dispensed by the character of Craig Mains, a smug successful author. Reference is also made to religion through Fee Kemp-Davies, elevated from her position in The Zoo Keeper. Ellis Carmichael, here a supporting character (technically as well as in the story), is given space to add comment. This technique of using the fiction of a novel as a vehicle for a range of topics has the effect of enriching the content at the risk of impeding the flow. On the whole, Missed Chapters gets the balance right.
A revised cover and minor changes were applied February 2008.
The Shepherdess
Scheduled for publication in 2009, The Shepherdess will complete the Zoo Keeper trilogy of socially themed novels. The instalments were designed as self-contained stories, though the final book has more connectivity.
Sound structure and a robust storyline are reliable indications of a well planned project. All the same, in thematic terms the novel might initially be seen as an assemblage. Religion is one of the topics. Born-again Fiona Kemp-Davies and god-bashing author Craig Mains build up a debate from conversations they started in Missed Chapters – this while the two conduct an affair. The use of drugs (legal, illegal, and grey area) is another motif. In an extended closing chapter worked by Ellis Carmichael and Su Gardeen, the theme of urban community development is returned to, and the various threads are weaved together.
Once again, narration is supported by bits of internalised thought and by liberal applications of often crisp dialogue. Occasional runs of indented text offer 'published' writing by the characters. There is opportunity for the reader to see what a character may not.
The Zoo Keeper trilogy marks out development stages in an author's output. These novels also provide some useful social comment and a nursery for ideas.
Satire
blrlnd
Apparently, the spark for blrlnd came on 10th January 2006. Publication in book form was on the first day of September. The release date is listed by some online bookstores as 9/1/2006, thereby suggesting publication a day before conception. Other catalogues have difficulty with the title, a vowel-stripped text-message rendering of Blairland.
The novel is the result of an experiment. It is written in a free flow style, where ideas and impressions are committed straight to paper. There is only one chapter, presented in a slightly unconventional typography. Although set a little in the future, the satire is squarely aimed at the late Blair period. Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories provide the template for the two adventures undertaken by the protagonist, Janice Annison.
Its spontaneous writing, cartoon-like cover design, and certainly its target era, would combine to make the book something of a short-lived superficiality. In ways it is. The humour ranges from dismissively silly to deliciously clever. At all times it is page-turningly present. Yet the Brimswall sense of serious purpose is evident, too.
The first of Janice’s adventures can be regarded as an overview of the domestic social landscape: a journey that dares leave the capital to stop off at crudely named locations and describe distinctly different perspectives. The second deals with the war for which Tony Blair’s name will be forever linked. It includes a cameo on terrorism. In a memorable line, the character Teri al-Tori explains, “Sometimes our people feel the urge to throw the shit back over the wall.”
Social, political and cultural references season the text of blrlnd – it is to the reader to choose the level of meaning. The essential aim, however, is entertainment.
brwnlnd
An air of inevitability pervaded the completion of blrlnd, just like the political period which inspired the draft. There had to be a brwnlnd. Available 'soon' (the publisher's catalogue currently tags the title as 'A social and political light satire having an unmistakable parallel with the brief Brown period'), the sequel continues the free flow style within a single chapter format.
The doughty Janice Annison sets forth again, changing her name in order to distance her sense of guilt from the reverence bestowed by a nation who believes her dead, to Jane Amieson. If in the previous tale her travels were geograpical, in this one the movement is of an altogether different kind. After ten years of incarceration in a lonely cell, and via a spell as a professional good listener (only Janice could work in a brothel and not be aware of the establishment's true business), the new Jane is persuaded to take a job which effectively puts her in charge of running the country.
While the humour matches that of blrlnd, the setting of brwnlnd is tighter, and more political. The symbolic Primed Minister of the earlier book is here replaced by the Unprimed Minister as a prominent character, walking, talking, and hiding. Other characters, whose roles and representations have all the discipline of a dream, contribute (or not) to the surreal story. At one point, the author admits to 'losing' a character; elsewhere, the protagonist has a moan about the author.
Arguably, this is a telling that lends itself to the free flow style, written as it is as real events unfold. And if the real events threaten to turn out more bizarre than the loose satire, then the story can at least head for the hills.
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