>>REVIEW
FRESH
Mark McNay
Doubleday Canada, 278 pp.
If you like your fiction to remind you of the writing of Roddy Doyle or Irvine Welsh with Quentin Tarantino lurking in the background, Fresh by Mark McNay may be just the summer read for you.
Sean O’Grady is a young husband and father who works in a chicken-processing plant on the outskirts of Glasgow. One day is the same as the next until Sean learns that his brother Archie has unexpectedly been released early from prison for good behaviour. Archie is an extremely violent career criminal, and when he hits the streets again, he expects to collect the money Sean has been holding for him. Sean’s problem is that he has already spent the money on vacations and gambling, assuming he would have plenty of time to replace Archie’s cash before he eventually got out of jail. Sean struggles desperately to find the money, but Archie is not a patient man, and soon Sean begins to fear for his safety and that of his family.
The menacing third-person narrative is interspersed with Sean's recollections of his turbulent childhood with Archie, revealing his brother’s seemingly inevitable descent into a criminal life. Sean and Archie were brought up by their Uncle Albert and his wife Jessie after their father abandoned them, and their mother died. Their reactions to her death are an early indicator of how different their lives will be – Archie runs away and is brought back after being beaten by the "polis," while Sean eats a chocolate bar and can’t talk about it. Sean’s resulting tendency to imagine himself, well into adulthood, as a hero in a variety of slick scenarios informed largely by TV and movie culture add a grim comic edge to an already highly charged narrative.
Yet Fresh is much more than a struggle between those who are good and those who are bad. The characters’ interaction is always believable, infused with moments of subtlety and tenderness that are beautifully conveyed, whether it be the strange dynamic between Archie and Sean, the casual, common warmth of Sean’s relationship with his wife and daughter or the fatherly kindness Albert shows as he works alongside Sean at the plant. Even villainous Archie has the occasional grey moment, and it is these flashes of humanity that make Fresh an entertaining and disturbing standout. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.