The book title gives no clue as to content. Individual sections are not titled either. Who is doing the reviewing and of what? Life? An old bus ticket? A bird in an unnamed tree? A neat alphabetical list at the back of the book, ranging from abortion rights to urban sprawl, tells us of some issues to which the author is paying scant or even ‘flippant’ attention. Otherwise, he presents no signposts. ‘I am a patchwork,’ he says. A set ‘of limbs and brain cells’ that appear to be dressed up, in disguise, after a ‘fairly late-in-life shift’.
The Review is a delightful book that offers far more than the ‘snippets of pleasure’ that Martin Stannard claims for it. Most of all I appreciate the clever and witty way the whole text is built on paradox. If an issue is profound it is described on a superficial level, if there are elements of tragedy we are given a comic, throw-away line, if the author is in danger of seeming serious, caring too much, then he will be light-hearted and indifferent.
No signposts or destination but nevertheless it feels as if we are on an expedition of sorts. There is a guide, a narrator, or rather a persona who goes to great lengths to pare his personality down ‘towards an oversimplified self.’ A persona that clings on ‘determinedly merry’ and more than willing ‘to pass an empty/few minutes,’ to share ‘a perky tale or two,/spruce up the day’, one who will try and live in ‘a constant state of cheer.’ This is someone who wants to be accepted for his ‘creamy brain flipping and flopping around like some kind of/barmy joint of meat determined to enjoy/the best and worst of times.’
No signposts, no destination, no apparent landscape for this outing, only a series of impressions of somewhere vaguely pastoral, fluffy as an idyllic holiday, ‘a convoluted expedition during/which men in safari suits and women not in/anything much at all gallivant around/without any apparent object in mind/except to fill a few lines of narrative on a /dull day.’ Or maybe Martin Stannard intends us to feel we are at a coffee morning or a ‘lovely country house weekend/with society women turning up at the party/with jewelled scarabs and slicked-back hair/with silk underthings’ Enviable? Probably not if one is hoping for love or friendship or any kind of real contact. This is a world where ‘People drop/in, you share a splendid dinner and a few drinks,/then they drop out, then they’re replaced/by other people.’
This brilliant evocation of futility is underpinned throughout the text of The Review by every aspect of language. ’This is no time to mess about in/the misty regions of symbolism,’ says the author, dismissing clever similes and selecting deliberately watered-down imagery: ‘My treehouse is above ground,/hovering with the wasps and wispy clouds’ he says, for here there will be ‘jingly birds in the bouncy boughs’. As for tone – it ‘must be full of the wisdom of (pick something/at random) …big things.’
The Review is rich in irony and humour. Martin Stannard is adept at the witty turn of phrase or the play on words such as ‘they can come after wool and go home fleeced.’ Several lines are pure laugh out loud: ‘The best advice I ever received was not to/have another half’. ‘Does a chicken have a favourite/egg among those she lays?’ Or here, in a description of the ‘leafy summertime of youth’: ‘On my face/ is an expression suggestive of trying/to ignore a runny nose’.
Delightful writing, light-hearted, clever, funny. But don’t be fooled. This is serious. We are always in ‘the dark side of the world’ with panic and desperation. ‘If I pass by a hole in the ground’ comments the writer, ‘I/shout into it in case someone is down it and/lonely.’ It’s all about trying to hang on: ‘Wild or beautiful/or savage or poignant it’s all really just/a coping mechanism that prevails despite/the weather.’
Toward the end of the book there are sentences that make an attempt to sum up the impossible: ‘If this is clumsy and lacking poetry/all I can say is, ‘You can’t have everything/but there’s no harm in trying. Lantern-bearers/sometimes wander in darkness but are able to retain/their sense of humour.’
I said there were no signposts in The Review, no final destination but perhaps this line offers a suggestion:
‘On the final mattress it all makes sense’.
Mandy Pannett 22nd June 2021
Tears in the Fence 