Fiction: Although many British novelists have attempted to match the authentic domestic realism that appears to come so easily to their North American counterparts, few have managed to make the ordinary come fully to life, writes Eileen Battersby.
Too many characters in British domestic novels make speeches instead of engaging in authentic dialogue with the poetry of exasperation and incomplete sentences.
There is a legion of worthy Hampstead adultery sagas featuring the discontented but materially privileged as penned by Margaret Drabble and co. There are also the funnyish farces offered by Howard Jacobson or David Lodge - and with Lodge and the late Malcolm Bradbury, far too often, their smug, obvious, unsubtle satires embraced the campus novel genre. Jacobson, Michael Frayn and John Mortimer invariably rely on taking snide pot shots at the government of the day for comic effect.
Even Tim Lotts's ambitious Rumours of a Hurricane (2002), which articulates unusual levels of truth, depends on support drawn from the portrait of a changing Britain which provides a thematic backdrop to the story of one man's tragedy.
One Day is, however, very different. It is a convincing, almost uncomfortably realistic performance, the examination of a marriage born in romantic defiance only to be damaged by life and betrayal, and defies the clichés. It looks at a struggling couple; the husband aware of the wrongs done him is also trying to deal with his other failures, while the erring wife lives in a state of guilty righteousness.
Set over one day - fittingly, the Ides of March - in an instantly recognisable London at the close of the 20th century, it centres on Ben Tennyson: possessor of an Oxford first in English, a product of middle-class suburban snobbery and disappointment, he teaches in a multi-racial comprehensive school and frets about his abortive cookery writing career.
His wife is Priya Patnaik, a full-blooded woman who does not believe in concealing her feelings or desires. The clever daughter of an established Indian novelist mother, Priya also went to Oxford where she met Ben. She now broadcasts at the BBC, for the World Service and seems informed if not exactly committed to anything.
They live in a flat with Arjun, their tyrannical three-year-old son, nicknamed "Whacka" for reasons that soon become clear. The marriage does not fall victim to any form of cultural clash - aside, of course, from Ben's father having objected to his only son marrying a foreigner. Sexual infidelity is the source of the problems. There may be some irony in the fact that this very fine British novel, which takes such an intelligent and truthful insider's look at British life as currently endured, is written by a non-native, Bombay-born, London-based Ardashir Vakil.
Not that it is in the least surprising to read yet another outstanding novel by an Indian writer, particularly this one. In 1997, Vakil made an impressive début with Beach Boy, the story of Cyrus, a young teenager living in Bombay. Quiet, understated and funny, it was one of the best novels of that year, just as One Day is likely to emerge as among the successes of this publishing season.
If it is a different style of British novel, it is equally, a slightly different Indian one. By standing between two cultures, Vakil certainly does not fall between them either. There are no clichés, no stereotypes and no easy comedy culled from inter-racial tensions. The difficulties are not cultural, they are personal - a man and his wife are at war - albeit stalemated. As the novel opens, both Priya and Ben are trying to salvage something for the sake of their child.
Everything - daily survival, the cooking and the drama of the moment, their son's impending birthday party - is being acted out under an oppressive but brilliantly well evoked cloud of compromise. As expected, the couple, carefully picking their respective routes about each other, engage in spoiling the toddler. Priya plays at being the devoted mother. The vividly described filthy, disorganised flat is full of expensive, broken toys. The angry, frustrated Ben is traumatised by the chaos.
Vakil begins his story with a graphic description of Priya noisily masturbating while Ben consults a book, The Inner Game of Tennis. There are no gimmicks. Vakil writes with a confident, understated ease; there are no linguistic fireworks, no forced gags, little sentimentality and no favouritism - he does not take sides. The reader can't help feeling transformed into a voyeuristic fly on the wall.
Just as Ben feels the injured party at home, on arrival at the school where he teaches, he is empowered, even to the elaborate sexual fantasy he creates featuring one of his colleagues. Meanwhile, Priya has become preoccupied by her mistakes.
The narrative is about internal turmoil and shifts between husband and wife. Vakil observes them both in a number of situations, and then reunites them for two memorable set pieces: the birthday party, and later for one of the most viciously authentic domestic rows yet described in a novel.
While Ben lives in his imagination, Priya inhabits her memories, including her first affair complete with its humiliations. "It was a bank holiday, and she was sitting in his small one-bedroom flat in Camberwell. She remembered her fit of uncontrollable shakes soon after arriving in his white-walled, white-carpeted ground-floor shoebox, the place she had found thrilling now seemed like an institution for the mentally ill. She was trying to read 'The Kiss', a short story by Chekhov, trying not to think of the way she had been torn from her sanity. Thrown out by Ben. No home, no friends she could talk to, stuck in an alien part of London with this huge gargoyle of a man, stuck in his pocket, listening to the endless waterfall of his laughter. Soon she found herself following him from room to room, as if she had forgotten that they were now living together. He turned on her. 'Stop following me round, man.' "
In addition to the above disaster with Marcus, there is the moonlit encounter with an old friend. It has lasting consequences for Priya and for Ben. So their story continues to spin on an agreed compromise and a mutual determination to avoid the messier options.
Beach Boy, with its engaging boy narrator and atmospheric Bombay setting is an excellent début; exceptional, too is this second book. Vakil has written an entirely different book, not as funny, far more barbed and only the flair is the same. One Day might well be seen as a satire on the yuppie life with its regulation early mid-life crisis. Except that it is far more than that.
His characterisation of his two main players is careful and balanced, explicit without being obtrusive - neither is reduced to a puppet.
The minor players are also well drawn. To one of them, Jocelyn, participating in the grown up conversation going on during the birthday party, Vakil gives some of the best lines: "No novel is ever as interesting as life, never as depressing and never as joyful. I think you're all quite mad and have had far too much to drink. The best novels are novels that give you some information, historical novels, for instance. The Lion of Albion, now that's what I call a bloody good read. Don't say you've never heard of it? . . .
"What I can't be doing with are novels about the trials and tribulations of middle-class north London couples. We've had enough of those to last us 50 years. Whinging double-income liberal parents, please let us have no more of their banal utterances."
Jocelyn is dismissing a vast heap of self-serious British fiction. Vakil may be making a satirical point of his own. Indeed the entire novel could be perceived as his satirical reworking of a genre. But it is as an individual work that it succeeds. His portrait of a marriage-in-a-mess resounds with many truths, sharp, intelligent writing and glimpses of real human terror undercut by regret and hope. One Day offers as many shades of darkness and light asany sequence of 24 hours can - and does.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
One Day. By Ardashir Vakil, Hamish Hamilton, 292 pp, £12.99