Fiction:Writing the Celtic Tiger has become the Holy Grail of Irish fiction. So far, our literary novelists have failed to answer the call because of a tendency to let what should be background details overpower those timeless requirements of the novel, plot and character, writes Alan O'Riordan
On the other hand, the chick-lit novels that have made Dublin the capital city of that subgenre, while of perhaps questionable literary merit, have managed to embody the times without getting preoccupied with trying to judge, dissect and analyse them. If our more serious writers could learn this trick and add it to their own capabilities, then maybe Dublin would get its Big Novel.
Stephen Price has already come close with Monkey Man. To invert that book's own Dunphyism-cum-blurb, it was a good novel, not a great novel. But it had its finger on the pulse and enough incident and character to ensure that, for the most part, Dublin's new pretensions and shibboleths adorned the writing without being its raison d'être.
The Christmas Club appears to be an attempt to learn from chick-lit. The title is pure Marian Keyes, as is the structure that sees Price chart the lives of six friends - Singer, Ronan, Frisby, Melissa, Oona and Dionne - over 13 years, beginning with Christmas spent in a derelict house in Donegal in 1988.
With energy and panache, Price introduces the characters. He describes Singer's life as a photojournalist in Belfast vividly in zoom-lens, perfectly-paced prose. Ronan is introduced in London and the breakdown of his engagement is a piece of witty misanthropy. The three women are believable too and the only bum note is the ludicrous Jay Frisby, who remains so throughout the novel.
Collecting the characters at a country house provides an opportunity for the reader to enjoy fiction's version of Brownian motion with characters bouncing off each other, propelled by the unseen force of a good writer. But Price, bored of his own creations perhaps, throws in a mystery story that is Enid Blyton for adults, and about as interesting. The mystery element persists throughout but always feels like an imposter in what should be a character-driven novel.
As the book moves towards the boom, the reader is treated to a Jekyll and Hyde act as Price ceases to be recognisable as the writer of Monkey Man and becomes a fully-fledged chick-lit novelist before our very eyes. Price's Noughties already feel irredeemably yesterday and, in a further misfortune, have everything necessary for the genre he is aping.
This is not the innovation hoped for, or expected from Price.
The workplace successes - the main action of the years Price narrates - are straight out of chick-lit and consequently are merely illustrations of the genre's most firmly held belief: that the solution to all existential problems lies in a suitably "sexy" job. We never find out what the characters feel it's like to be a journalist, a Hollywood actress, a film director or an architect, as career progressions are written in breathy "next thing he knew" prose: "To Live and Work in Manhattan was a major hit for Melissa, both commercially and critically. 'The new Philadelphia Story,' the New York Times cooed." How can a satirist such as Price write such bilge? It would be grist to his mill anywhere else.
The broad, bland canvas of chick-lit, used to suggest the endless possibilities of other people's better lives without really examining them, is slavishly adhered to here. Fiction of this kind really must do more than update its characters' CVs if it is to be interesting. We never get to observe the characters' development - they merely turn into other people, much as Price turns into another writer. Some say if you can't beat them, join them. But Price can't beat the chick-lit writers and should never have joined them.
The Christmas Club By Stephen Price New Island, 370pp. €14.95
Alan O'Riordan is assistant editor of Magill magazine and a freelance journalist and theatre critic