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And that is it as far as the plot goes. Pilcrow is a fictional documentary rather than a yarn: nothing much happens to John, and in fact the novel’s whole point is to describe what it is like to be clever and yet unable to do anything. John’s doting mother, a collation of social insecurities whose goal in life is to maintain respectability, and his father, a kindly yet distant RAF man, both feature, but this novel is about the internal world of a boy who is deprived of an external world.
It is admirable in many ways. A 500-page uneventful, one-character book which (mostly) holds one’s attention must have something going for it; Pilcrow is pains- takingly observed and well researched, and Mars-Jones has thought carefully about what it must have been like to be disabled in a society which discriminated against those with disabilities. The period is evoked subtly, and John’s plight never sinks into pathos. Interestingly, in fact, John is a witty narrator but at the same time mildly dislikeable — he is someone you want to read, but not necessarily someone you want to know. His interior life is so complete that he has little use for people; he loves his parents, but beyond that he sees others in a detached way.
This is good up to a point, but it does mean that the novel can be emotionally cold. Adam Mars-Jones is an elegant critic, but at his worst his accuracy can shade into harshness. (The line between the two is hard to identify and yet the distinction is crucial, since it marks the difference between engaging well with a book and failing to engage with it at all.) This tendency comes through in a novel which, in its less successful moments, lacks a depth of feeling to match its depth of intellect. It may be, of course, that Mars-Jones is deliberately holding John at arm’s length, and therefore expects us to notice these flaws in his perception, but one does cry out for some more warmth at times.
However, it is testimony to the novel’s overall strength that this chilliness does not ruin things altogether. Pilcrow, the author’s first novel since The Waters of Thirst (1993), is not a masterpiece, but it is wise and stylish, and certainly good enough to make us hope that Mars-Jones does not wait another 15 years before adding to his oeuvre.
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