The Wager and the Bear - John Ironmonger

John Ironmonger is a wonderful and unique writer. Let's just get that out of the way. In fact he has just got better with every book he has written (I haven't read The Coincidence Authority, but will have to remedy that; even though by my above assertion it's not going to be quite as good as later works, but it will still be brilliant I imagine). His second novel, after his debut The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder, was the wonderful The Whale and the End of the World (or Not Forgetting the Whale), a quirky book with a serious message set in a little Cornish village during a worldwide pandemic; the novel a marvel of English character, wit, superstition and deeply felt humanity, features that took on an international flavour in The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild.

Ironmonger, I'm very pleased to discover, has returned to St Piran with some quirky English characteristics for another timely work that encapsulates all the same qualities in order to approach another issue that relates to the human response to an upcoming catastrophe. Much in the way that Not Forgetting the Whale wasn't exactly a grim post-apocalyptic warning, so too John Ironmonger takes a typically light and amusing approach to the subject without denying any of the seriousness of it. The disaster facing the people of St Piran this time, and much of the world even though St Piran is the little centre of the world as far as this book is concerned, is climate change.

You can roll your eyes, but as I said, Ironmonger has a wonderful entertaining way of introducing the subject, the whole crisis here arising out of a miniature crisis that takes place in a bar in the Cornish coastal village. Tom Horsmith, having a few drinks with his friend Benny to celebrate his 20th birthday, rounds upon Monty Causley, the local Tory Member of Parliament for his many failures, including his customary non presence in the village where the family have an old mansion, but principally taking him to task for his climate denial stance. The truth of the matter can only really be tested one way, the two men making a wager whether in 50 years time, the Causley mansion will be inundated by the rising tides of the sea. The bet is made in front of the whole pub, eagerly listening in.

There is a little more to the bet however and the audience who hear it. The MP says he will be sitting in the house in 50 years time, if he is still alive at the age of 90, and will drown in the house is flooded. Tom accepts that if he loses the bet, at the age of 70 he will walk into the sea and drown himself. The stakes, high enough though they are, could be easily forgotten and passed over as the drink talking, but Tom’s friend has filmed the exchange on his phone and it goes viral on social media. It could ruin Causley’s political career, and indeed as the years pass it hasn't been forgotten. The hook is a terrific one, and a terrifying one, as The Wager and the Bear follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the two men (and the planet), and their subsequent encounters over the next fifty years.

All of this is related in a manner that I haven't yet alighted upon in relation to John Ironmonger; the wonderful premise laid out in the most charming and engaging way possible, with wonderful character insight and detail that manages to immediately paint a realistic and wonderfully unique look at the world. Or the end of the world. Ironmonger’s writing and the situation he develops allowing him to put across this important message in an entertaining rather than a preachy way. Sure, Tom is prone to provide many crucial info drops along the way, but only to emphasise the difference between people who really understand the scale of the problem and those who use it for performative politics.

The writing is engaging, but so too are the characters. Here, as in John Ironmonger's previous books, there is a strong central character. You would of course expect that of any author, but it is even more meaningful in Ironmonger's books. They tend to be driven and purpose, sometimes seem eccentric, but only because they are determined to believe in a cause, believe in justice, believe in themselves. But most importantly, they believe in taking things in perspective, a wide perspective, across the span of a lifetime (or many lifetimes in the case of Heloise Starchild). And they need to because they - and the world - face serious challenges; not from an evil adversary - the narrator keen to point out that there is no one wholly bad in this book - but rather that we have allowed things that are wrong to take root and flourish. And they will.

If there is one message in The Wager and the Bear, it's not a shout to deaf ears about the dangers of climate change, or indeed preaching to the converted, but a reminder that we need to act NOW to be able to deal with the problem we have created. You probably already know it, even if you can't - or don't want to - envisage the scale and the impact of the crisis, but John Ironmonger unflinchingly and entertainingly - and perhaps optimistically - lays it out for you across the years. The message then: Be more Tom.

Reading notes: The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger is published by Fly on the Wall Press. I read a Kindle edition.