Book review: Truth or Fiction

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 18:36

Truth or Fiction by Jennifer Johnston Headline Review, 152pp, £14.99

JENNIFER Johnston is an elegant and economical writer, whose novels are always beautifully structured. The title of her new book – Truth or Fiction – might be applied to all her work. She is interested in the stories people tell themselves, of the gap between what they perceive as truth and their lives as seen by others.

Caroline is a London journalist sent to Dublin by her editor to interview Desmond Fitzgerald, playwright, war correspondent, literary giant of the 1930s. She has supposed him to be dead. But, the literary editor tells her, he is "very much alive", only forgotten. "What does the old writer do when he stops writing? Or is he still writing? Is he a legend in his own country? Is he mad? Sane? Whatever. Go and find out. I believe he's about 90."

Caroline is reluctant, all the more so when she has a spat with her partner of ten years who suddenly suggests marriage. This annoys her because she is over 40, the question has not been brought up before, and she is afraid she is too old to have children. This has nothing to do with what follows, yet isn't irrelevant. Her partner is surprised by her irritation, tells her it hadn't occurred to him that she wanted marriage or children. Why didn't she raise the question? This suggests that Caroline is reticent, shy, not very good at personal relations, therefore colours our view of her interpretation of Desmond.

He welcomes her arrival. His second wife, Anna, whom he married before the war when she became pregnant, is apparently hostile. The marriage is evidently not easy. He still meets his first wife, Pamela, once a famous actress, now self-consciously scatty, for lunch once a week, though he conceals these meetings from Anna. It is not long before he tells Caroline that neither is the true love of his life. This tells the reader more about him than Caroline understands.

The old man drifts in and out of sense. Now he is alert, now wandering. He has been recording memories on tape, and has Caroline listen to them. One, which upsets her, tells of a horrible incident, a crime committed, the day the war ended. But did it happen, or is he imagining it, making it up to seem more interesting? Caroline isn't sure. Nor is the reader.

Against her will, she finds herself drawn in to the complications of his life. She can't be sure if she likes him and admires him, or dislikes and despises him. He is vain and conceited, yet vulnerable in his old age. Has he made a success of his life or not? He has swagger, but does his apparently masterful manner conceal self-doubt? She has no idea when he is telling the truth, but more and more she resents his self-absorption.

There is an accident. She is called on for help, which she reluctantly supplies because she can't avoid it. It is too much for her. How dare these people make such demands on her? Part of the cunning of Johnston's writing rests in her sleight-of-hand. The novel is ostensibly about Desmond and his chequered life, and so also a study of old age. Yet by the end you are likely to think that it is Caroline and her uncertainties, her emotional reticence, which is its true subject.

When eventually her patience snaps and she leaves Desmond and his family to resolve their problems themselves, she hears Anna, who has seemed, and perhaps is, an ill-tempered oddity, even a termagant, break the silence in the kitchen and say, "What an extraordinary woman." The wheel has turned and one scarcely realised that it was moving.

Johnston writes with exquisite precision, yet scenes and characters are brought vividly before our eyes. A lesser writer might have made a novel three times the length of this one out of her material. It is characteristic – and right – that we never really learn what Caroline has been dispatched to learn about Desmond. Were his plays any good? What did he do in the war? Which of the three women mattered most to him? We don't even know if he is sane or mad – and the beauty of it is that this doesn't matter. Johnston is in the same class as William Trevor – that is, head and shoulders above most writers at work today.