Book review: Naming the Bones

Published on Sunday 28 February 2010 10:34

NAMING THE BONES Louise Welsh Canongate, £12.99

THE back cover of this novel presents us with Dr Murray Watson, lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, knee deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground facing a psychopath intent on his death. It does not mention that it takes more than 300 pages of this 380-page novel for him to get that far, or that you spend much of that time wondering how he had the gumption to end up anywhere quite so interesting.

In this respect, this book suffers from false advertising. Though it masquerades as an adrenaline-fuelled horror, helped along by memories of Welsh's glitteringly gothic debut The Cutting Room, Naming The Bones is more of a literary whodunit, a steady, thoughtful, carefully plotted page-turner which will pass a few pleasant hours.

At its heart is a dead poet, Archie Lunan, who frequented the bars of Edinburgh in the 1970s and produced a single slim volume before dying in a freak sailing accident off Lismore at the age of 25. Watson wants to resurrect his reputation, and is on sabbatical from his teaching post to research his life. "It will be like being a detective," cajoles his girlfriend, Rachel, to whom everything is a game including, we swiftly learn, her relationship with Watson. Certainly, he pursues his task like a detective, interviewing witnesses, looking for clues, but his quest seems destined to end in a blind alley until he takes himself to Lismore and the revelations of the past start, grudgingly, to reveal themselves.

As a protagonist, Watson lacks the maverick charms of Glasgow auctioneer Rilke (The Cutting Room) and the interesting profession of conjurer William Wilson (The Bullet Trick). He also lacks drive. One is left with the sense of a man still reeling from the loss of his parents, one who has muddled through his life and done moderately well without really knowing why. As a result, he often appears passive at the heart of his own story, and we have little sense that he develops in the book.

However, he is surrounded by a cast of supporting characters who are vividly evoked, whether as sketches or fleshed out vignettes, from the toddler in the greasy spoon cafe letting out "a pterodactyl caw" to the middle-aged academic whose fierce energy still burns, "a small pilot light in the gleam of his eyes".

The book excels in its gently satirical evocation of academia: the internecine rivalries, the flirting and bitching, the clichd affair with the head of department's wife, conducted in the office, crumpling the pages of a first-year student's essay, the insidious insecurities of those whose careers are built on analysing the work of people they secretly envy.

Welsh's central question is about what makes a writer. Lunan had talent, says Watson's elderly professor, but talent isn't enough, one also needs discipline. Now, his work is in danger of being lost in the legend of his life and death, a fate which has befallen so many great writers.

Watson is researching Lunan's life, though he doubts his own enterprise, vacillating between his own fascination with what happened to the poet and the view that the life is "an unfortunately distraction from the art". At one point, in a fit of pique, he suggests that all books should be published without their authors' names to stand or fall on their own merits: "F*** the egotistical, drunken shaggers who by some quirk of the genes were able to forge the stuff he used to think revealed the world to him."

But if the book has a flaw, it is in failing to show us why he loves Lunan's work so much. If the story is to be driven by a man falling in love with a book and consequently with its author, it needs to draw emotional energy from that, as was done so effectively by Pascal Mercier in Night Train to Lisbon. Instead we spend much of the book wondering if Lunan's reputation is worth resurrecting.

The book opens in Edinburgh, before shifting to Glasgow – both competently evoked, though lacking the gothic flourishes of the Glasgow of The Cutting Room. It is when the action shifts to out-of-season Lismore that the setting starts to play an active part in the story.

Throughout, Welsh has tried (with mixed success) to build a sense of menace. In the closing chapters, she pulls out all the stops: the dark and stormy night; the soon-to-be-excavated burial ground; the isolated island; the suicidal companion; the overtones of Celtic myth. Though the denouement is gripping, she has set herself a tough job: it's hard to believe Murray Watson is interesting enough to get into that much trouble.

This article was originally published in Scotland on Sunday on 28 February 2010