Felix in the Underworld - entertaining, charming, compelling - and, in the end, a novel that's heartfelt and deeply moving.
Many readers on both side of the pond are familiar with author John Mortimer's most famous creation: Horace Rumpole, bringing to mind actor Leo McKern's portrayal of the colorful old barrister in the long running British television series.
Quite unlike Rumpole, the hero of the book under review is Felix Morsom, a mild-mannered, self-effacing novelist living a quiet life in a quiet seaside village two hours' drive south of London. "Writing had never been the difficulty but stories now came to him as rarely and unexpectedly as sex." So muses Felix as he looks out the window from his writing desk at the choppy English Channel. And to think, he once wrote a novel that made it to the best seller list, he was nominated for the Brooker Prize and, something he's particularly proud, although never sure if the reviewer was entirely serious or simply joking, having been dubbed 'the Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea.'
Felix acknowledges his last round of real personal drama occurred some time back when his wife Anne told him directly she no longer loved him and was planning to go away with Huw Hotchkiss, head of Media Studies at the university where Felix taught English. However, three months following her announcement, Anne said she couldn't leave since a medical test told her she had little time left. "It wouldn't be fair on Huw" is how she put it and Felix looked after Anne faithfully until the day she died.
But Felix's life of quietude is about to end. On the novel's very first page, Felix listens to a tape recording as a male voice recounts time spent in a police cell - one telling detail: "It was while I was relieving myself that my cell mate approached, pulled down my clothing and bent me over the toilet. The next thing I was aware of was a sharp pain in my rear passage and a feeling of resentment." The voice concludes accusingly, "I just hope you will understand the responsibility you bear for all that happened to me."
The next morning Felix meets up with his publicist - beautiful Brenda Bodkin, the lady that has always set the agenda and accompanied Felix on his interviews, luncheons and book signing tours. Today Brenda joins Felix on Denny Densher's Good Morning, Thames Estuary, a lively call-in radio show. All goes as usual until Felix recognizes the voice of one caller as none other than the voice from the tape.
The man identifies himself as Gavin and proceeds to ask Felix why he doesn't write about those times in his own life centering on big, dramatic events, passion and losing self-control. Felix answers that when it comes to such, he writing style is to hint indirectly. Gavin snarls "Or do you rely on other people to have the big, dramatic moments for you?" to which Denny cuts him off.
That evening, during a book signing at a bookstore to launch his latest novel, Out of Season, guess who shows up? And Gavin not only speaks with Felix, Gavin introduces "the celebrity author" to a woman dressed as a cross between ragamuffin and shifting kaleidoscope, a woman by the name of Miriam.
And we're off, a rapid fire sequence of events: Miriam presents Felix with an envelope containing the photo of her son Ian, Miriam claims Felix is Ian's father, Felix received a formal government document demanding he pay twenty thousand pounds for the maintenance of Ian over the last ten years, Felix seeks legal advice, Felix meets with Miriam and Ian and, last but hardly least, Felix barges into Gavin's empty apartment, threatens Gavin in writing and shortly thereafter Gavin is found murdered.
Felix in the Underworld is a whopping good novel with a host of vivid, memorable characters from the world of publishing, the world of law and law courts, the underground world of the homeless, the grueling world of the poor and the world of prison (oh, yes, Felix spends time in prison).
As John Mortimer told an interviewer, what is fascinating about our modern urban society is, in truth, we are living in many separate societies, each one with its own unique language (the society of the law courts, for example). And as a writer, he has an opportunity to share his portrayal of a number of these societies.
Felix in the Underworld is John Mortimer's twenty-fourth novel, published in 1997 when the author was age seventy-four. And let me tell you folks, Sir John's wisdom is manifest in the ways in which he works the details of his story and the depiction of his men, women and children in all their humanity.
Yes, children - in particular, the character of Ian. Recall I said that Felix in the Underground is, in the end, a novel that's heartfelt and deeply moving. So deeply moving, I was in tears when I finished the concluding sentence and closed the book. You will have to read for yourself to appreciate what I'm alluding to here but I'll offer a hint. See the young man in the artwork I've included above. Well, shift the age a bit and that could be either Felix or Ian.
Thank you, John Mortimer. You are a supreme master of the craft.
British author most prolific John Mortimer, 1923-2009
"This high mood stayed with him as he started to undress. He emptied his pockets and found the brown envelope Miriam Bowker had given him and opened it, expecting a fan letter or a request for literary advice. What he found was the photograph of a child, a small boy, perhaps nine or ten years old. Felix had little experience of children. The boy in question was standing on a beach under a grey and threatening sky. If he was on holiday, the child didn't seem to be extracting much pleasure from it. He peered at the world from behind spectacles which were too large for his face and looked as though he had seen a great deal in his short life and didn't expect much good to come of it." -- John Mortimer, Felix in the Underworld
This mischievous delight is certainly a trademark of his famous fictional barrister, Rumpole of the Bailey, but in ''Felix in the Underworld,'' Mortimer's -- good lord -- 27th book, not counting his various translations and anthologies, it takes center stage. Felix Morsom is a quiet fellow who lives ''by that sad sea, the English Channel.'' He is a novelist. He spends his days looking out the window in his house at Coldsands-on-Sea watching nothing happen, and writing quiet novels about the middle class in which nothing happens; sort of like watching debates on campaign finance reform. Felix is well regarded, which is to say, his books don't really sell. Once he was nominated for the Booker Prize, and one of his books even grazed the best-seller list. A reviewer called him the Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea, an accolade of decidedly mixed blessings. Second-rate radio talk show hosts taunt him with it, and people call in to ask when he's going to write something with real passion in it. The slings and arrows of Felix's latest book tour and his genteel-shabby literary life are among the pleasures of this witty work, reminiscent of other late-period novels like Kingsley Amis's ''Russian Girl'' and Peter De Vries's ''Peckham's Marbles.''
Poor Felix. ''Writing had never been the difficulty but stories now came to him as rarely and unexpectedly as sex.'' His wife cuckolded him for a Welsh professor, but then got a terminal disease and decided it wouldn't be fair to inflict her dying on the lover. She stayed with Felix for her remaining three months. How thoughtful! He's accompanied on his book tour by his publicist, Brenda Bodkin, and yearns for sex with her.
''I can't go on writing forever about the view from Coldsands pier. I do need some sort of drama in my life.''
''What sort of drama?''
''You and I in the bathroom. It'd be an experience.''
Brenda turns out to be very doughty and a good friend indeed, but for the time being she has that no-nonsense English attitude when presented with bulging trousers: ''Don't let's spoil it all by struggling around naked in a bath or anything revolting like that.'' More tea?
Into this drab little world arrives a tape recording that contains a graphic first-person narration of what it's like to be a guest at one of Her Majesty's prisons. Mortimer's light touch can make the repulsive amusing, or at least palatable. In the hands of, say, Martin Amis, this story might leave you with a different taste in the mouth.
A few days later during his pitiable book tour, Felix comes face to face with the tape's sender and his accomplice, a seedy woman named Miriam Bowker. At this level, Mortimer's novel is a hilarious turn that perhaps only authors will fully appreciate: book tours are work enough without finding paternity-suit blackmailers waiting in the autograph line.
It's a weedy little world. Brenda intermittently copes with a best-selling author named Sandra Tantamount, who demands Dom Perignon and Prozac in her hotel suites. ''In Dublin,'' Brenda complains, ''she wanted me to shoot vitamins into her bum with a hypodermic syringe before she'd go on the Gay Burns show.'' A police constable is itching to get published; editors pit their authors against one another; and watch out for those who you think are working hardest on your behalf.
Lugubrious as this world is, it's not the one of the title. An even worse one -- if you can imagine that -- awaits Felix after he has to flee in the wake of a brutal murder. He's managed to implicate himself to a fare-thee-well by leaving so many incriminating clues that Inspector Clouseau would not have difficulty deducing that he was the murderer. (What a godsend the answering machine has been to mystery writers.) Felix has also gone to the trouble of leaving threatening letters. The police amusingly descant on these jottings: ''I can't believe he'd ever write a sentence like 'I shall be compelled to take steps to silence you!' ''
Was this feckless scribbler capable of such passion? Is the Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea in fact a Raskolnikov? Not bloody likely, but then neither he nor the reader is certain that he's not the father of Miriam's boy. And there's another uncertainty, a real whopper: is the dead man, in fact, dead?
On the lam among the homeless who sleep underneath Blackfriars Bridge, Felix finds himself, as Dorothy memorably said to Toto, in a non-Kansan situation. Mortimer likes to get our fingernails dirty. We're now in that train car with his dad and mum. But the trip is worth it for the neat, if smelly, moments -- the well-meaning vicar with his revolting sandwiches, the tips Felix receives from his fellow mendicants: operagoers are the best almsgivers, but get them coming out, not going in.
Mortimer is an old pro at plotting. The last chapters keep us guessing and flipping back to find the clues he'd tucked away even as he keeps us laughing, especially at the preening of the barristers and Queen's Counsels, including the perfectly named Septimus Roache and Marmaduke Pusey. In court, Mortimer is on such sure ground you don't even hear his footsteps. My own suspicion is that ''Felix in the Underworld'' is a Trojan horse, a clever stratagem to insure that on his next book tour, his publicist will be more than happy to stock the hotel suites with Dom Perignon and to stick him in the bum with vitamins.
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