Silverback - Phil Harrison
You don't have to be of a certain frame of mind or cultural background however to see certain big archetypal themes jump out at you even in the first few pages of Silverback; a trial, judgement, death, patricide, religion. We learn that James Fechner, who is taking part in jury service, worked as a young man with his uncle, a funeral director called Abraham who was also something of a patriarch or father figure, preparing dead bodies for burial. Although now a doctor and respected surgeon, Fechner's background is Protestant working class from a tight-knit east Belfast community. While there is more to a person than those influences formed by social and religious upbringing, they do nonetheless maintain an undeniable hold. The question that Silverback grapples with is perhaps to what degree you can escape them and be your true self.
Family evidently is another major influence over character and attitudes, and in some ways Fechner has been struggling to break away from these forces and family history all his life, the most fractious of which appears to be his relationship with his father, Edward. Fechner has gone his own way, done his own thing, achieving grades to have a choice offered to few from his background; studying medicine at Queen's University. There he mixes with Catholics for the first time, but all this displacement seems to do is leave him with no sense of his own value or worth. It's not a lack of self-confidence, it's not that he is concerned whether or not he is better than anyone else, but there is a deeper sense that he doesn't really know who is and isn't comfortable in his own skin.
His time on a jury for a murder trial however marks a turning point without Fechner being entirely sure why. Robert Rusting has been charged with murdering his father on his way home from a social club in East Belfast. Robert has also had a problematic relationship with his father William, a former paramilitary turned community leader, who has spent a lot of time in prison during the Troubles. Despite being nothing like him, Fechner recognises or thinks he understands where Rusting has come from, his background and history not unlike his own. Rusting is however a bit of a thug who, despite his plea of not guilty, could certainly have killed his father. Fechner however feels inclined to give him a fair hearing without prejudice.
Something changes after the trial however, Fechner becoming cold, dead inside, unable to connect with people and the world around him, feeling detached like an impartial observer on his own life. A successful doctor, well-off, married to a beautiful wife, he feels dissatisfied, vaguely undeserving, as if he hasn't been true to himself in some way. The sight of Rusting again on the Newtownards Road puts his life on hold. He tells his wife his is going on a fishing holiday in Galway and instead rents an Airbnb just off the Albertbridge Road, shaves his head and buys clothes from a War on Want in Dee Street - all of this perhaps more meaningful to anyone who knows that part of the city - and finds a way of meeting up with Rusting again. Does he see in Rusting something that he might have been?
Undoubtedly it is connected to all of those big issues raised around the time of the trial; justice, fathers and sons and questions of identity all play an important role underpinning the story, but they remain unobtrusive in the background. They are much too big a matter for Fechner to consider or really articulate when he hasn't got around to figuring out himself. Perhaps the one big archetypal theme that dominates is the one suggested by the title of the book; masculinity. The Silverback gorilla is either a loner, a group dominant male, often aggressive and prepared to fight for domination. There are a number of males competing for dominance in the complex social worlds and family history that Fechner is a part of, but he isn't sure whether he wants to be a dominant part of that group or remain a lone Silverback.
Phil Harrison keeps a tight grip on any archetypal themes and metaphors, never letting them overshadow the questions Fechner grapples with in his own individual search for identity. The difficulties of his own upbringing and his aligning himself with the unpredictability and unsuitability of Rustings inevitably leads into dark and uncomfortable territory, but Harrison delves deeply into those issues in this short but intensely involving novel, fearlessly bringing them to the surface and confronting them head-on.
Reading notes: Silverback by Phil Harrison is published by Fleet (Little Brown) on the 20th June 2024. It's available in hardcover and as an eBook. Just by chance I was in a coffee shop on the Newtownards Road when I started reading this. A little further up the road in the more upmarket Ballyhackamore admittedly, but it still helped paint a vivid picture of what I was reading. Actually, I'm not even sure it helps at all, as I often find it difficult to relate to books that deal with the particular issues of living in Belfast, as it can be too close and you miss the wood of the human issues for the (metaphorical) trees of the Newtownards Road. Not that I feel that this is anything like the issues considered by Fechner, but there is an intriguing paradox in Silverback that he needs to go back to his roots to try and find a new way forward, away from it. That's just one of the many intriguing ways that the author deals with the issues raised in this book.
Comments
Post a Comment