Man Gone Down
As I was reading it, it was announced as the surprise winner of the Impac Literary Award. Count me among the surprised.
It’s not the writing, which is first rate – it’s the central character, a black father-of-three, with not so much a chip as a block of granite on his shoulder.
This grievance is fuelled by his race and the lifetime of put-downs it inspired, and by his firm, if unfounded, conviction that he is doomed to failure.
We meet him on the eve of his 35th birthday, with four days to turn his life around for the financial salvation of his family, and, as a byproduct, his own emotional salvation. It’s a journey that will test his loyalties, his morals, his resolve – and the reader’s patience.
There were times I wanted to give our hero a good shake and tell him to get over himself. His self-absorption was such that he had decided his family was better off without him. This decision was based on his dysfunctional childhood and fraught relationships with his parents, and the belief that history would repeat itself.
He had decided his wife could not possibly be ‘the one’ and could not love and understand him, by virtue of her whiteness.
In fact, the world was Ishmael’s oyster, if only he could believe it. Educated, a talented writer, and offered a variety of opportunities for self-improvement, he chose to believe each offer of help was motivated by pity – and inevitably turned it down.
This bent towards self-destruction has both the reader and Ishmael wondering if he will end it all. As his story progresses, we learn the real reason behind the mistrust, the darkness, the introspection – an incident in his childhood that is described in all its brutal detail in the closing stages. At this point, our hero is forgiven his self-absorption. I followed him right to the end, plumping for his redemption.
His fate?
I recommend you read it, too.
