Fashionable Fiction: The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin
In the book pages of the broadsheets I’ve noticed that there is a selection of topics that crop up over and over again. These are topics guaranteed to produce lots of opinionated columns and plenty of polemic in the comments section of the online editions. They can never be satisfactorily resolved and therefore can come out again, be dusted down and milked another time.
They are as follows:
- The novel is dead. Or is it?
- Genre X is fundamentally rubbish and anyone ought to be ashamed to be seen reading it. (most commonly attached to women’s fiction or romance fiction, but crime fiction often gets a good bashing then a spirited defence)
- Why, oh why, won’t people read literary fiction and will insist on reading Dan Brown?
- Why do women need their own book prize (ie the Orange)?
- Why is no-one today writing the great books that reflect contemporary society the way Dickens and Tolstoy did?
We are currently in a cycle of “The novel is dead” This reached its apotheosis in a late night discussion from the Edinburgh Book Festival on BBC’s Late Review the result of which was that the novel was declared neither dead nor alive. Certainly I felt none the wiser.
At the end of this discussion, one of the panelists Ian Rankin pointed out that there were still no crime novels on this years Man Booker Prize shortlist. When I saw this I’d just finished reading The Naming of the Dead, and it struck me as grossy unfair that Rankin had not made the shortlist previously because of the snobbery attached to the genre he writes for. Because for me, The Naming of the Dead answers a lot of those questions that the book pages love to kick around.
In Rankin’s skilful hands the novel is not dead. He completely transcends the limits of his genre, while remaining fastidiously true to it. His adept story telling provides such diversion and shows why people will always read for a great story. And I think this story, set as it is against real life events - the G8 summit, shows him exploring and critiquing contemporary life, just like those nineteenth century greats did.
The Naming of the Dead is the 16th Rebus Novel, but since I haven’t read any of the others, I could take it as a stand alone, almost as if it were a Booker contender.It didn’t feel like a novel in a series and you didn’t need to have read all the others to understand what was going on.
It took me a while to get into it. His pace is leisurely. You do get a good wander about seeing how the land lies, but really what he is doing is coaching you to go at Rebus’s pace: steady, but always acutely observant. Then you start to relax into the stream of consciousness, seeing and feeling the way the world appears to Rebus. Rebus is perhaps numb and slow to warm up at the beginning because he’s just buried his brother and doesn’t quite know what that means to him yet. But as the case unfolds and he has a murderer to chase the pace heats up slowly. But it isn’t breathless. There is time to pause and consider. You can put the book down, but you know you will come back to it. Rebus beckons you back to tell you what it was he did next and how that all transpired. About a third of the way though you start to long for a train journey so you can really get your teeth into it. But yet you are allowed to put it down, the rests are there. You can go away and think about what you have read, let the scenes resonate in you mind.
I think the very breathless school of story telling, where you gobble a novel down like junk food, desperate for the answers, has its place, but Rankin’s approach is far more satisfactory. It is companionable, like having a drink with a friend. You want to take your time. It’s like a lovely piece of rich fruit cake or dark chocolate. You can nibble at it very slowly and be deeply satisfied.
And all the while, he’s being sneaky and clever with you. He’s doing real literature, Man Booker judges, take note.
Take the character of Big Ger Cafferty, the gangster. Now I am not one to read anything with gangsters in it. I do not want to be disturbed by organised crime and all its horrible implications, but Rankin makes me look at this stuff, and consider it. At first Cafferty is horrible, a monster, and I am rightly repulsed. But then he appears again and again and I begin to be seduced by him, by his devil-like power. Rebus speaks of Cafferty getting his claws into people and I realise the writing has done the same. Cafferty is no longer just a horrible gangster, he’s a fully rounded human being, who has to use the banisters to get himself back up the stairs. Furthermore we learn he lives in Merchiston and has a baby grand piano. I find myself wondering if he ever plays and if he does, what does he play? What do his neighbours think? Do they even know what he is? The unspeakable has become utterly real, and is revealed in all its complexity. I find I am thinking about James Hogg and the Memoirs of a Justified Sinner where the devil is so attractive. Rankin is making clever allusions here, but deftly. Remember he’s doing all this in a crime novel, a genre that the snobby judges of the Booker won’t consider worthy of their consideration.
And when the crime is solved, you see evidence of how sophisticated a piece of work this is. You realise how all the themes link up and echo. You could set this as a set text in schools - there would be plenty for students to get their teeth into, endless issues and angles to discuss and consider. There is nothing slight about it.It is deeply felt, full of humour and compassion for the human condition, all in a skilfully wrought package that obeys all the rules of a crime story. When you consider Rankin's popularity you can't help but think that in such hands the novel can only be in rude health. It is about time that the literary establishment recognised his considerable achievements.
