Thirty Years On - Mirror Mirror by Donald Green

It is thirty years since the publication of my uncle's novel, Mirror Mirror by Donald Green. I read it again to mark the occasion and I'm pleased to say that not only has it stood the test of time but it's better than I remember it.
I have a spare ex-library copy that I salvaged from Portsmouth Library many years ago for 20p. Just so that I might not be the last person ever to read this novel, if anybody wants to give it a good home, I can post it to them. E-mail me at the address on the profile.

Donald Green, Mirror Mirror (Hamish Hamilton, 1979)

There are precious few clues to the setting of this novel, it's in a village called Frogwell but you'd need to notice that the characters say 'bleddy' rather than 'bloody' and a few other minor dialect phrases to place it somewhere near Nottingham. As such, it puts Donald Green in a geographical group with Lawrence, Alan Sillitoe and Stanley Middleton. Of these, as a novelist, it is Sillitoe that he most resembles but he's perhaps closer to Stan Barstow who was officially a bit more Yorkshire.
The prose is in places a bit over-written as if trying too hard or trusting the thesaurus above a more ordinary usage but it provides some striking lines as often as it jars. There are recurrent examples of great observation and description, like 'the swishing, wet liquorice roads'. But it is the psychology that impresses most in the book, most obviously in the state of mind of Brian, who has 'learning difficulties', but also in the finely observed relationships between individuals and social classes.
Brian is innocent and inevitably misunderstood but as his family, the Morgan's, and the Wilson's, plus Anthea the hairdresser, are revealed to us we see a whole network of dysfunctional hopes and pretensions. If the main theme of the book is Brian's difficult sexual awareness, then the way that these other stories are linked into it is well-organized and convincing.
Rita works for the worldly, sophisticated Anthea and eventually gets what she thought she wanted which was Brian's brother, David, but it proves that he wasn't quite what she wanted after all. There is a domestic violence issue and another relationship joining the families across a perceived class division and animosity akin to the Montagues and Capulets.
The novel reaches a gripping climax when the baby that Rita has by David is taken by Brian. The ending manages a complex mix of inevitable but non-tragic.
Some incidents are described in successive passages from the point of view of different characters and the plot proves to be a well-structured framework for the many clearly realized relationships. Don's style is informed and communicates well but things are shown, not told, and the reader needs to be attentive in places because the reader isn't patronized or spoon-fed.
It's a shame that no second novel ever appeared. There were considerable attempts before this one was accepted and I have a fiction magazine in which Don was placed in the short story competition. There was a second novel in manuscript somewhere, once, but it is notoriously difficult to get that second book accepted.