Morality Tale
Sylvia Brownrigg
Picador, 2008,
pp 224, £ 7.99


Sylvia Brownrigg’s new novel gives us a classic agony-aunt situation— the love triangle. Pan, as she is nicknamed, is married (to a man initially referred to only as “my husband”), but she can’t stop thinking about Richard, the envelope salesman whose visits liven up her days behind the counter at the stationery store where she works.

She is won over by his Irish-American warmth, “four-leaf-clovered eyes”, big red beard, philosophical bent— everything, in short, that her lean, stressed, irritable husband lacks. Could Richard be ‘The One’? And if he is, could she— should she— abandon her marriage for him?

It’s the old, old story, and you half expect the first chapter to end with a bizarre postmodern twist, just because it’s 2008. But Brownrigg, a deceptively subtle novelist, keeps it simple. In fact, she seems to be narrowing her focus: her acclaimed previous novel, The Delivery Room, dealt with stepchildren (as does this one), but also with therapy, cancer and the Bosnian war.

Her debut, 1998’s The Metaphysical Touch, happily took in Kant’s metaphysics, New Age spirituality, internet cults and Charlie’s Angels. But this one sticks to Pan and Pan alone. Her world is bounded, appropriately enough, by a triangle— home, stationery shop, falafel joint. It’s subtle but effective, so that when she steps outside these bounds in the run-up to the climax, it feels as though she has leapt off the edge of the earth.

But this is not a simple love triangle. Pan’s husband comes with accoutrements, namely his two stepsons and his toxic ex-wife, Theresa. But she is a distant, nagging presence; Brownrigg has made Pan an isolated, rather lonely individual— there is, thankfully, no wisecracking best friend on her speed-dial. We are the sole recipients of this woman’s secrets, and her tone, as she talks us through the development of her feelings for Richard and the decay of her marriage, is confiding, rueful and friendly. We’re with her every step of the way.

This is the point at which Brownrigg’s novel takes on a more interesting dimension. Yes, we’re with the likable (if a bit wet) Pan all the way, but where does that leave us, morally speaking? Brownrigg has Pan perform quite a lot of self-justification, in her gentle way. It’s dressed up as chatty narrative (“Let’s be honest here,” she keeps saying, “let me explain something”), but there’s no getting away from the fact that Pan is the betrayer twice over: once when she took her husband away from Theresa, his wife at the time they began their affair, and again when she fell for Richard. There are even hints of an older betrayal, so painful that she cannot bring herself to tell us about it. Or is she too ashamed?

By hearing Pan’s story and taking her side, we put ourselves unthinkingly in the wrong— unthinkingly because it is human nature to cheer true love and boo the grouchy spouse. If we don’t take her side, we find ourselves sitting in judgment from a particularly uncomfortable seat, one we share with the husband, who, having been an adulterer in his turn, is now a self-righteous victim of adultery.

Brownrigg is well aware that she has put us in a quandary. She lets Pan win us over, then comment obliquely on our support, or lack thereof. For instance, when she takes comfort in the healing powers of housework, Pan notes pointedly: “You can never be faulted, morally, for picking up dirty clothes.”

So this isn’t the old, old story after all. You could read it that way if you liked, but Brownrigg drops a clear hint on the very first page that, in the age of blogs and agony columns, there is no such thing as the simple morality tale of the title.

The Guardian