Ludmila's Broken English By DBC Pierre Faber, 328pp. £10.99
Imagine being buried up to your neck in sand, a prey to nasty pulsating little insects. It must be a horrible, irritating sensation, a bit like trying to read DBC Pierre's trashy, puerile Ludmila's Broken English - arguably the worst novel I've ever read.
Having won the 2003 Man Booker prize with his genuinely funny extravaganza, Vernon God Little, one boy's battle against society, DBC Pierre has returned to his store of crazy gags and one liners only to find it embarrassingly empty.
There is neither a line of humour nor purpose in Ludmila's Broken English. But there is an abundance of authorial desperation to cobble something out of two lame ideas; the belated separation of English Siamese twins, the Heath brothers, now aged 33, and the antics of a daft family of Russian peasants determined to keep Grandad's military pension despite the old man's sudden demise while raping his granddaughter.
Never has a second novel proved such a bad career move.
Here is an author poorly served by his publisher. Had Pierre not won the Booker would such weak, poorly conceived material ever have seen the light of day?
Whereas the miracle - and "miracle" in the context of this disastrous effort now seems the operative word - of his startling debut was Pierre's successful striking of a tone of manic exasperation, this second book flounders - no, collapses - through its shrill, laboured vulgarity and inconsistent prose, with its larding of forced literary similies.
The Heath twins have far more than their medical history to worry about. Their part in what passes for the narrative largely consists of exchanging repetitive mutually insulting banter replete with sexual innuendo. None of it is remotely amusing.
Blair and Bunny Heath may now be physically separated, but they remain two halves of the same flawed whole. Bunny is the weaker, doomed to early death, largely resident in the bathroom and, oh yes, given to prefacing his comments with "I mean to say". Brother Blair wants to have a job, sex and adventure.They bicker all the time.
Meanwhile across Europe, somewhere in the vast landmass that is Russia, a gormless young girl prepares to run away from the shack she calls home to find a new life with her soldier lover, "her ticket to the west". But first the girl must contend with her vile grandfather. Despatched to fetch him home, she ponders the corruption of a man "spoilt by munitions". He began to not care about killing others, and "finally not to care about himself".
Ludmila remembers when this process began "because it was the day her first menstrual episode introduced itself with spatterings on the shack's earth floor; an awkward day with hot cheeks and a sense that she smelt of goat's cheese and beetroot jam". This may seem a bit dramatic but how about her grandmother's near Shakespearean reaction? "More blood on these mountains! . . . As if the place wasn't already a Persian carpet of blood! Pay close attention to what I say: blood is no welcome portent, in the place where you sleep."
What on earth is Pierre striving for here? None of the caricatures are convincing. An element of quasi-Biblical language quickly steps into the Russian family sequences. On cue grandad sets about raping the girl. "Open the pouch for your provider . . . The old man threw down the bottle, and tipped to his knees. He crushed her breasts with a slab of forearm, wrenching down the trousers beneath her skirts . . . The equation was suddenly this: if Aleksandr [the grandfather] sodomised her, he would more quickly be persuaded to sign his pension voucher and bread would appear on the family table that night . . . And if she wet the air with lusty squeaks, there might even be orange Fanta."
Grandfather continues: "Hold the thing in your hand - squeeze it, pilot your saviour in." But Ludmila has had enough. "She spun under him, snatched up her glove, and stuffed it down his throat." Exit Grandfather.
And again, on cue, "the family tractor sent chugs over the rise" and Ludmila's brother, Maksimilian arrives. He is a well-spoken fellow, who drives around, has no work and makes long-winded, formal speeches. If these family sequences are intended as a parody of the Russian novel, they fall far short of their target - if there is a target.
So consider Ludmila, somewhat dim sex object with a tiny grasp of English, and then consider the Brothers Heath. How are they going to meet up? Because, as is so obvious, Pierre is planning an East meets West picaresque, courtesy of the internet. The novel staggers in the style of a doomed tennis game between the Heaths and the stage Russians. Late in the action there is a massacre that might or might not have happened. Confused? Never mind, anyone who persists that long will be as well.
If readers suffer, there is an even stronger sense that Pierre is not enjoying himself all that much either. He seems to have been left with a lot of glue on his fingers but nowhere to put it.
No one could believe a word of the ensuing fiasco, or care. In fact the most interesting thing about Ludmila's Broken English is the way in which it seems to compound the fairytale success of Vernon God Little as the work of a writer who could prove to be a one-book wonder.
In that novel, Pierre hit on the dream formula of one young boy, part Bart Simpson, part philosopher, who by leaving his classroom to use the lavatory avoids the mass killing then perpetrated by his troubled pal. Vernon pays the price for his survival by being held responsible for the crime.
The success of the novel lies in the narrative voice, a cross between the work of James Wilcox with milder hints of John Kennedy Toole's comic classic, A Confederacy of Dunces - all neatly overseen by a 21st century Huck Finn.
There is a great deal to be said for writing only when you have something to say; when there actually is a story to tell. Perhaps Ludmila's Broken English could fill a three-minute slot on Little Britain but such a sketch would probably end on the cutting-room floor. Pity the reader staggering through the mess - and lament DBC Pierre's fragile talent so cruelly exposed.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Eileen Battersby
Fiction
