Fury Cross the Mersey

Wreckage
Niall Griffiths
(Jonathan Cape)

It's grim up north suggested English pop ironists the KLF in 1990. Although they omitted Liverpool from the interminable list of towns that formed the lyrics, on the strength of Wreckage it deserved a mention. Devastated by economic decline, the once thriving city suffered through the 1980s from extreme unemployment, rampant crime, and the most notorious football hooligans. Niall Griffith's fifth novel evokes the decaying city as a place populated by wannabe gangsta Scousers in fuchsia shell suits. Aimlessly they lurch from one ultra-violent episode to the next, with Stanley knife in hand. 

Always with the Stanley knife. Darren Taylor is a particular aficionado of this arcane tool. "Ee, yew an that Stanley knife. Like a kiddie with a toy yew are, see. Favourite teddy bear, like." So says Lenny the Welshman, one of the few with leverage enough to talk to Darren in such tones without having his face sliced open. He's a bit too keen Darren is, with improvised weapons like Stanley knives, pint glasses, and lump hammers. It's the lump hammer that's got him into real bother, due to its unnecessary deployment to the head of an elderly Welsh postmistress. 

Griffith's unravels this gloomy diary of desolation in a vernacular style resonant of Irvine Welsh. He goes further though, tracing a thread through the ages, creating a genealogy for this endemic violence. Further still, the consequences of it. On victim, victim's family, nurse, priest. Peeling away the strata to reveal both cause and effect of this perpetual cycle of affliction.

And nowhere redemption. Through the syntax of misery and desperation shines no light, only more of the same. Any dull illumination of Darren's wretched soul comes from the thought of future slashings. And how to spend the four thousand pounds the postmistress handed over before he whacked her. No conscience or thought of consequence here. Just "All this fuckin money, lar! We're rich Alastair!" 

And so the wreckage piles up. Grim though it is, Griffith's wildly creative language is majestic. This is the articulation of experience, the characters composites of people he has known. While that's not a reassuring thought, and may put one off holidaying Merseyside, perhaps it offers some hope. If a voice this vital can arise from such a malignant environment, there’s some dim inkling of salvation.


Gavin Bertram.