The Afterparty, Leo Benedictus

Philip sat at his keyboard determined to write something about The Afterparty that didn't include 'post-modern', Paul Auster, or suggest that he wasn't really "Philip" at all. Something that didn't include email exchanges, or references to Twitter campaigns or metatextual marketing...

Not easy. (Though I am pretty confident I am not the real Rebekah Wade).  

I seem to have turned up unfashionably late to The Afterparty. All the hip folk arrived back in April but I only tagged along after being handed a late invitation from a Reading Matters books of the year thing. Even then, I was mostly tempted by a Scoop! Journalists in Fiction diversion.

Ostensibly, Leo Benedictus is telling the story of William Mendez, a freelance journalist from London, who in his spare time has been working on a novel called Publicity, or Publicity****** as it later becomes, tells the story of  "a night that changes everything for nerdy Michael, a Fleet Street worker ant, when he agrees to take his boss’s invitation to an A-list party at a London club. Inside, reclusive movie star Hugo Marks is announcing his re-entrance to society."

  ‘Oh, I’m just a subeditor.’ ‘I see. Which paper?’

‘The Standard.’

‘So you write their headlines?’

Hugo knew what a subeditor was, though he could not for the moment guess why one was at his birthday party.

‘Some of them, yeah,’ Mike said, ‘and I make sure everything’s spelled correctly. It’s a day job,’ he shrugged.

Quite whose story it is, and quite who is telling that story is one of the mysteries of The Afterparty. It is a very cleverly constructed novel and Benedictus pulls off the tricky challenge of combining arch post modernism with quite a good story and almost sympathetic characters.  

 

Comments

[Margot Kinberg]

...and this is a very clever review - thanks :-). I like your blog's new look, too.

[Maxine]

Love the very droll review ;-) Neat. I have seen this book in a few "best of" lists for 2011 and am not sure whether to try it. A bit different from my usual fare. I love the new look, but what happened to C and K in your leaderboard?

[Philip]

Thanks. Despite reservations, I did enjoy The Afetrparty - found it more engaging than Declan Burke's highly praised by some Absoloute Zero Cool with which it has similarities.

[Declan]

First time I've heard of Benedictus - sounds interesting. 'Almost sympathetic characters'. The best kind, I've found.

Cheers, Declan

[Philip]

Thanks for the comment, Declan - You’re some man for one man!

‘And we’ve definitely met,’ I say, blowing on my coffee. ‘In a manner of speaking.’ ‘I don’t follow.’ Except then I realise I know him through the web, the blog he writes that keeps tabs on the latest in Irish crime fiction.

He's the one who wrote: "The matron arrives. I wonder if they teach bustling at matron school,"
which made me laugh ouit loud.

[Declan]

Heh. Nice one, Philip - odd to see my own stuff re-mangled via a blog comment. T'would appear we're into the realms of meta-meta-fiction, at this point ...! Cheers, Dec