Tag: A Perfectly Good Man

A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale (2nd reading)

British writer Patrick Gale lives in Cornwall

I first read and blogged about this book in June 2016. It led me to add Patrick Gale to my list of literary favs. I had read his Rough Music (2000) years before and read it again in 2019. Having now read most, yet not all, of Gale’s twenty one books, these two stand out, for me, as his best.

Recently I watched an interview with him in which he mentions that the devastating opening scene was based on a news item and it was this first scene that he wrote without any idea what was going to happen next … except that the two characters, the perfectly good man, Father Barnaby Johnson, and a young man, Lenny, had to be connected in some, as yet, unforeseen way.

This to me is the essence of what novel writing is: a strong scene that just has to be written and then the writer in the privacy of his own mind, experience, and in a space (room) of one’s own (thank you Virginia Woolf) lets the subconscious out for a walk and writes down what he sees and hears. This is how most novelists work; they’re called pansters (by some): they ride by the seat of their pants. I’ve yet to meet or hear from a writer who plans every detail before writing begins, although I hear that Gustave Flaubert was one.

I’ve said this before but it’s worth saying again: if you are surprised what you read on the page it’s highly likely that the writer was too.

For any would-be novelist this book is a must read. The idea of letting a strong novelistic event with only two characters and one setting plant the seed of the story of a man’s life spanning half a decade is tantalising. The timeframe of the action is segmented and re-arranged. Gale loves taking time and playing around with it. Hence chapters called “Lenny at 20” are followed by “Dorothy at 24” are followed by “Barnaby at 52” and finally, “Nuala at 52” is followed by the final chapter “Barnaby at 8”. This format makes each chapter not unlike a short story although all of them are preempted with known knowledge which allows the reader to understand and sometimes realise an important reason or revelation that is only known by the reader, and not by any of the characters. You feel privileged.

And that’s how you learn about the connection between Father Barnaby Johnson and young Lenny: it’s not stated, you work it out.

You can find many of Gale’s books, including this one, here.

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A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale

A Perfectly Good Man Cover Pic

In 1937 J. B. Priestley was – if not the first then one of the first – writers to use time as a plot point. His play Time and the Conways tells of the decline of a monied Yorkshire family between the wars. Act one is set in 1919 at the birthday party of one of the daughters; act two is set on the same night but in 1937 and we see how far the family and all its members have fallen; and act three continues from act one and we see all the misjudged decisions, wrong turnings, and false expectations that caused it all. It is a tragedy, not just of a family but of Britain as she unwittingly is drawn into war, a war that Priestly predicted; but because the audience knows what happens they are spared any melodramatic sentimentality at the Conway’s future and, instead, are left with the truly tragic knowledge that it is all their own fault, therefore teaching us that our future is all our own fault. Damn it!

By the end of the first chapter of Patrick Gale’s A Perfectly Good Man I was gasping at what I had just witnessed, as our hero, the perfectly good man, an Anglican vicar, Father Barnaby Johnson, had just witnessed and could do nothing to stop: a suicide in broad daylight at a kitchen table. Time jumps back twenty years for chapter two and by its end I was misty-eyed at a lonely farm girl who almost became a matinee spinster, and at her sudden and unexpected happiness that she grabbed with her heart and both hands, despite her mother’s selfish interference and her own self-acceptance of a lonely life; so that when she saw Barnaby, finally, and they kissed and kissed again I’m sure I heard an orchestra belting out a soppy Korngold score like anything starring Joan Fontain and Lawrence Olivier: emotional, yes, but not sentimental; there’s no time for that as the next chapter jumps forty years into the future with Barnaby at 60. We know the consequences of everything they see and do. As with Priestley’s time plays Gale reveals outcomes before their gestation which not only spares us sentimentality and underlines the folly of mankind but also provides the reader with a few delicious “Oh yes, of course!” moments. I love those little moments.

Gale’s clever narrative, not only doesn’t follow the linear life of Barnaby Johnson, but rather his life is painted not by what he does but by what effect he has on the people around him: Dorothy, his wife; Lenny, his young, lapsed parishioner; Carrie, his daughter; Phuc (Careful! It’s rhymes with look), his adopted Vietnamese son; Modest, an interfering, totally unpleasant and obese man, to whom Barnaby shows nothing but kindness; James, his gay uncle; and Nuala, his onetime Australian lover. We get to know Barnaby Johnson through his reflection in the lives of these Cornish people. Be assured that I have left out some important information in my descriptions of these characters: I don’t believe in spoilers.

It’s set in Cornwall and in the little parishes north of Penzance, the same location of the previous Gale novel I read and blogged about; and incidentally two characters from that book, Notes from an Exhibition (see my previous post) make an appearance in this one. A neat synchronicity but only because I read these two back to back.

He has a way with the nuanced phrase …”the sisterly happiness she felt for him was borne up on little upwells or erotic regret …  she could smell the disappointment of her, a passing sourness, as of stale sweat trapped in a dress sleeve … In a priestly way – all cheekbones and fine feeling – he was handsome, she considered … And there she was in his maths class like a princess sent to a rural comprehensive to learn humility… Even now they weren’t exactly alone because her parents were standing in the porch, like an advertisement for mortgages…she simply preferred to keep her feelings private and as reassuringly compartmentalized as the meticulously size-sorted screws in the trays of her tool box …”

These gems give you little jolts of joy, like finding a $20 note in a pair of jeans you haven’t worn for a while.

Notes from an Exhibition, along with A Perfectly Good Man are now available as ebooks and you can find them here.

Since my literary heroes (at the moment), Colm Tóibín, Tim Winton, and Damon Galgut are not very prolific I’m happy to add Patrick Gale to the list so now I have his whole body of work to explore. I hope you will too.

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