Tommy the Bruce, by James Yorkston review: 'The satellite characters are straight from central casting'

James Yorkston | Ren Rox

Sometimes, the smallest of details can be exceptionally telling. This novel, James Yorkston’s third, comes with a puff from his previous one, The Book of the Gaels, culled from a piece in The Times (not an actual review). “There are echoes of Douglas Stewart’s Shuggie Bain…” Alert readers will note that the author is actually called Douglas Stuart. Whether this is the publishers’ mistake or their own failure silently to correct from the source, it is still disrespectful and does not exactly inspire confidence.

Such trepidation is more than confirmed on the opening page. The eponymous Tommy bangs his head; that this is sore is conveyed by the word “f***” in parentheses and capitals. The prose is scattered with Scotticisms – it is not really Scots but little linguistic winks at Scottishness – “bairn”, “skelp”, “stour” – and to reinforce the stereotype, our narrator is hungover.

Further marks of identity come in the italicised, reported speech of a bothersome customer’s queries about olive oil drizzled banana on toast, smashed avocado being a cliché too far. In the rest of the short chapter we get “dunt”, “my six foot of height” and “ma toes” in the same clause, “scoosh”, the unconvincing name “McShoogle”, “aye”, “cludgie” – something of a favourite word it transpires – “splatch” (which might be onomatopoeia rather than Scots), “auld” and “oot”. And an obligatory “shite”. It is infantile, “jeelie piece” Scots. Curiously, although his accident happened while reaching for strawberry jam, it is raspberry jam he gives the customer, but whether this is the character’s confusion or the author’s can’t-be-botheredness is unclear.

The plot is perfunctory. Tommy, who runs a down-at-heel Perthshire hotel, is hapless, hopeless and an orphan whose brother has also died. The cover says it is set in “the remote Scottish Highlands”, and there is a 30-page diversion set there. Fi turns up in the pub, and with astonishing celerity, she and Tommy are an item. Is it too good to be true? She too has lost her brother and father, and soon her ex-boyfriend has moved in after being in prison. The ghastly Simon’s late brother was a prominent criminal figure, but mutual grief does not form any bond with Tommy. Also, which of them is the father of the child Fi is carrying? The jacket copy informs us that “criminal forces” threaten the “little happiness” Tommy and Fi have “managed, haplessly, to cobble together”. The last two words of the précis, at least, are precise.

The satellite characters are straight from central casting. Auld Jock drinks in the bar and remembers things, and at least has a name, unlike the bekilted English tour guide, referred to as “Birmingham dude”. His anonymity might be consequential, although it is strange that Tommy enters into a financial arrangement providing lunch for his foreign coach loads seemingly without ever ascertaining his name. I suppose it might be a bit like wondering if Tommy had to pay inheritance or capital gains tax on the hotel, or just put it down to narrative expediency.

Parts of the narrative have no function whatsoever – an incident, for example, with Tommy taking Fi’s mother to an auction being filmed for an antiques programme, and her attention-seeking purchase of a three-foot crystal eagle. This has no consequence, relevance or character development. Other parts are redundant through superfluity. If we read on page 86 that Tommy thinks “Who’d have kent I’d be here, three months back? With a lassie of my own, a bairn on the way, someone to share my after hours with”, do we really need him pondering on page 87 that “Everything seems different. Got a home now. A partner. A kid on the way…” Does the author really think so little of the readers that we require this reiteration? Has anyone actually edited the text? The denouement is not just hackneyed, but is frankly a moral cop-out.

There is nothing more difficult to write well than first person, present tense descriptions of pain (it takes immense skill to have the reader believe in both the actuality of the agony and the ability to form grammatically plausible sentences: adding in interrogatory remarks and questions to the reader as if they were there redoubles the implausibility). Add to that the rather more than average occurrences of people wetting or soiling themselves, being urinated on or caught short, and generally poor instances of toilet hygiene, and a diagnosis of arrested development might not be inappropriate. As I dragged my eyes towards the end, I actually prayed there wouldn’t be the equivalent of a post-credits surprise. There was. It added nothing, except a “piss-midden”, “pissy, sweaty stink” atmosphere and a final fanfare of effs.

I did toy with the idea that this is actually a work of avant-garde genius, a paradigm of kenosis. Is it possible to have a “novel” that is not clever, not funny, not moving, not surprising, not gripping, not frightening, not sad, not perceptive and not beautiful, with no convincing characters, no engaging drama, no ethical quandaries, no imagination and no interesting use of language? Is it even a novel at all?

Tommy muses at the end “maybe my lack of decision-making has caused all this though, eh?” Maybe it has, James. I mean Tommy.

Tommy the Bruce, by James Yorkston, Oldcastle Books, £10.99