Silverback by Phil Harrison: Dark and unnerving tale of heartless fathers and damaged sons in Belfast

Silverback

Author: Phil Harrison

ISBN-13: 978-0349727974

Publisher: Fleet

Guideline Price: £18.99

A great rebalancing began in publishing a few years ago, when the voices of those who had traditionally been demeaned or simply ignored, notably women and people of colour, found themselves unexpectedly elevated in the literary hierarchy. Narratives of straight white men, for decades the mainstay of review pages and awards committees, regardless of their quality, were pushed to one side as readers discovered there were other – often better – stories worth telling.

On the whole, this has been a good thing, although it has meant that novels about men, especially about the sort of toxic men one would avoid in real life, are thinner on the ground.

Phil Harrison’s Silverback is a dark and unnerving tale of heartless fathers and damaged sons, told in a spare, clinical tone across a slim number of pages. The sort of book you can read in a session or two as it pulls you into a malignant universe of betrayals, fights, tense conversations over pints, physical brutality and even sado-masochism.

The book opens with a court case. Robert Rusting, a Belfast hardman, is on trial for the murder of his father, while James Fechner, a respected surgeon, finds himself as jury foreman. It’s no spoiler to say that Rusting is acquitted – this happens early – and a year passes before Fechner happens to see Rusting again, when he finds himself surprisingly drawn to him. Inveigling himself into his life, he drinks in his local, befriends him and plunges into an underworld of small-time gangsters, trucks arriving from eastern Europe filled with cheap laptops and knock-off Buzz Lightyears, along with a crew of flyweight henchmen vying to be seated on their boss’s right hand.

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Rusting is a disconcerting character. Described as having “the look of someone who had been beaten and was waiting for it to happen again”, he gives off an air of carefully controlled violence, like Tony Soprano with his measured breathing as he instructs a man to remove his hat in a fancy restaurant. Harrison crafts strong scenes to show just how respected – no, feared – he is by the insular community that defers to him.

Fechner is his total opposite. Scholarly and reputable, he’s also weak and non-confrontational, watching mutely from the sidelines for months as his wife conducts an affair. A revealing early scene sees him observe a boy stealing a woman’s bag and being too frightened to intervene. Entering Rusting’s world, he has the chance to reclaim his masculinity, or what he perceives as masculinity, and grabs it with both hands.

A world still exists in the hinterland populated by difficult, violent men, where a single wrong word can lead to a fight or worse

The great strength of the novel is in its depiction of the trauma inflicted on both men by their fathers. In Rusting’s case, it’s a former loyalist, released from prison under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, who even in later years terrifies his son. In Fechner’s, it’s one who can spare no words of kindness or love, treating him like an unpaid servant. His recovery from what appears to be a terminal illness is presented as an act of pure determination on the part of an old man who has some cruelty in him yet and refuses to die until every ounce of it is spent.

The cycle of abuse continues through the generations. In a brilliant scene, Fechner witnesses Rusting berate his own son for playing with an action man, which he considers to be a doll, and boys don’t play with dolls. Boys do cry, however, and although the young Robbie is only a fleeting presence in the book, one worries for his future.

[ John McGahern Prize for debut Irish fiction 2023 shortlist revealed ]

Harrison writes with great conviction, his story moving forward with tragic insight into Fechner’s uncomfortable transformation while his understanding of Northern gangland violence is convincing. It’s not always clear, however, why Rusting trusts Fechner or allows him access to his business, even to the point of taking him on a trip to Serbia to source new tat that he can sell to his customers, and a little more development of Rusting’s goals here might have been welcome.

Books such as Silverback leave one conscious that a world still exists in the hinterland populated by difficult, violent men, where a single wrong word can lead to a fight or worse. Narratives of masculinity might, for the most part, be on the decline but, as one of Harrison’s characters mentions in reference to the Troubles, there’s still plenty to go around, if you’re eager. The good ones, like this, deserve attention.