Sean O'Brien - Afterlife

Sean O'Brien, Afterlife (Picador)

Having won prizes for all his poetry books and then checked off translation, poetry criticism, an anthology, plays, radio work, short stories and an opera libretto, it was foresseable that Sean O'Brien would add the novel to his empire of genres.

That it is set in the world of poetry comes as no surprise, nor that it is scathingly funny in places or that the characters feel considerable animosity towards each other. The thing one can't foresee is that it is not set in the North East but in the Marches.

But Divott isn't Ledbury, a Jerome is not an Eric Gregory Award, Reeves and Reeves is not Faber and Jane Jarmain isn't Sylvia Plath.

The small, intensely self-regarding world of poetry is claustrophobic throughout a long, hot English summer related in flashback. Tensions and jealousies within a small group of emerging poets find no release and Alex, although not the most talented, is the the most arrogant, manipulative and vindictive. A middle section in which some German Marxists (it is 1976, after all) turn up ex machina to raise the volatilty levels reads less successfully. A party organized by visiting American academics becomes cathartic and ugly with acid-spiked drinks and Hell's Angel violence. But the ending provides one more surprise than might have been anticipated (although, by definition, surprises can't be anticipated) and some justice prevails.

The laugh out loud moments dry up somewhat after the threateningly idyllic first part, but not before the American arrivals have been satirized,

In the course of the evening her interest in poetry developed exponentially. She had heard Lowell read, and Anne Sexton and Elizabeth Bishop. I was surprised she hadn't been waiting on the ice with a net when Berryman went off the bridge in Minneapolis.

And bludgeoned by O'Brien's lumphammer humour,

Here was someone it was quite simple to dislike: all she had to do was turn up.

But after the party, there is a more relaxed, elegiac tone. Jane's mental state after the acid has gone beyond poetry into a place of its own, compared to an impression of Syd Barrett,

the million-mile stare from nowhere into nowhere with no hope of coming back and no here to come back to anyway.

And O'Brien's world-weariness is a part of the feeling of downgraded value in which,

one day the students say that Ulysses is too long; Dubliners replaces it; a little while later they wonder if they have to read all these stories. And so on.

Although the ending seems like a qualified win for good over evil, the world has already been revealed as beyond redemption. The contingent, over-rated futlity of poetry, the vainglorious pursuit of kudos is surgically demonstrated in the world of readings, magazines, conferences and prizes, an industry locked into its own insubstantial vanity and, in fact, O'Brien does wheel out one of his favourite quotes, Vanity, vanity, all of it vanity, to prove the point.

The book gripped me but, as a brand-loyal O'Brien devotee, it was ever likely to. I have no idea how this novel would read to someone who has never seen his work before. He has written about what he knows but you get the idea that he might have preferred not to know it.