Something Like Happiness by Tom Newlands review: 'no denying its bleakness'
Although Tom Newlands’ new novel could easily be classified as the grittiest of grit lit there’s a lot more to it than that, writes David Robinson
Frazer's mother was the last of his parents to die (cancer, then walking into a train) but at least he has the flat he grew up in: a newbuild 50 years ago when Calderknowles was starting out as a Central Belt New Town. Only now there is mould spreading across the ceiling and Caitlin, the mother of his five-year-old autistic son, has just punched him in the stomach and left him because he hasn’t done anything about moving out of “this shithole - condensation catchers and carpets that squelch”.
Put like that, Tom Newlands’ second novel after the spectacular success of Only Here, Only Now would only attract the most masochistic fans of Scottish miserabilist fiction. Certainly, there is no denying its bleakness: Frazer has a dead-end job as security guard, the local food bank is a downright necessity, and the burst of optimism with which Calderknowles was founded has comprehensively drained away into neglect.
Yet while, in theory, this novel could easily be classified as the grittiest of grit lit, that’s not how I read it. What intrigued me was how Newlands managed to make so much out of so little.
I don’t mean this in a bad way - actually, just the opposite. Because right from the start, we know that Frazer has a way out. The housing association has offered him and Caitlin tenancy in a brand-new, mould-free semi on the other side of town.
Why does he even hesitate? You or I wouldn’t. But then perhaps we are not neurodivergent and perhaps - surely - Frazer is. Quite rightly, Newlands doesn’t spell this out by giving any mention of a mental health diagnosis: we don't, after all, go around with signs above our head showing such things. Instead, we look at actions.
And this is where I should qualify what I said earlier. Because Frazer’s reluctance to take up the offer of a new home is - to him, if not at first to us - no small matter at all. Indeed, along with whether or not he should continue his relationship with Caitlin, this constitutes almost the entirety of Newlands’ plot. Frazer craves the security of being able to live in a place that, along with the mould, also houses all his memories from childhood on; a place whose every detail reminds him of something else, like “the shiny patch in the hallway where, in the days before mobiles, his mum would rest her shoulder”. A place where his son, also averse to change, and to whom he is absolutely devoted, feels at home.
It is, to my mind, a measure of Newlands’ talent as a writer, that this is quite enough: making the reader care whether or not a fictional character moves into a house by firmly establishing a dilemma that at first doesn’t seem to be one is no small achievement. Neurodiverse himself, Newlands enlivens the narrative with unexpected descriptions. As Frazer wobbles down the street on his too-small bike, we are told “all the branches and maps of blood inside him felt cold”. His feet “felt like jelly”, we are told - that’s predictable - “maps of blood” isn’t. There is no shortage of other examples.
I’m not completely convinced by Caitlin, an amateur boxer who probably has issues of her own (“Sally at the gym says it’s my rage that makes me a contender”) whose rich parents offers an unnecessary contrast to Frazer’s hardscrabble life. But by taking us so completely inside Frazer’s mind, and showing its range and depth, not just with eccentric metaphors but unexpected flashes of humour, he lifts his story beyond the familiar tropes of Scottish urban fiction.
Humour? Well, maybe that’s where Newlands’ novel really is bleak. Because in 2016, Calderknowles is freshening up its housing stock ahead of a visit by Prime Minister David Cameron. And how are they doing that? By covering them with cladding.
Something Like Happiness, by Tom Newlands, Phoenix, £20. Tom Newlands is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 15 August
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