I don’t remember why I picked up Chapter & Verse. We were at the service station; I read the back, then the first page and I was pretty much hooked immediately.
There’s a little bit of Ivan Conner in everyone. A man distraught and vengeful of a world that fails to acknowledge his talent or his existence. Ivan’s life has always been about success and recognition; to be put on a pedestal of admiration by his peers, to be stopped in the street and be told “Hey, aren’t you Ivan Conner?” and for him to respond with, “Well, yes I am, would like an autograph?”. Ivan wants this to be life, but sadly, the world is not so easily conquered.
Once a literary genius, dubbed as “The heart of a generation” by reviewers far and wide, Conner hasn’t had an easy time lately. His last few books have barely sold, financially he is in no man’s land, his wife had left him a while ago, and now lives with another man.
Conner has two kids, neither of them seem to like Conner, only accepting that he is their father, but the confirmation is that of obligation rather than joy. They’re kids, but they seem to show more intelligence than even Conner at times. Worst of all, he lives with his mother, who not only looks after him but is perhaps the biggest fan of his books, his best friend, and the only person who turns up to his book readings. Ivan Conner is forty years old; the situation is bleak.
A man distraught and vengeful of a world that fails to acknowledge his talent or his existence
Campbell, Conner’s agent, is running out of ideas. Without letting Conner know, Campbell has visited every publisher he can think of to sell Conner’s latest book to. The existing contract with Winfrey is at an all time low, Campbell can see what is coming, but Conner in his self belief of intellectual superiority and literary talent expects Winfrey will lap this up as his previous titles.
Things have taken a turn for the worst however, and Winfrey has decided to let Conner go. His book is great, but it won’t sell. No one cares about his books anymore, they all want sleaze, dirt and action like his rival Francesca Brady creates. The reviews don’t matter, no one cares about reviews anymore. Conner is at the end his tether, and decides to visit Marcus, a book shop owner who doesn’t really sell much in the way of books.
Marcus converses a shocking reality to Conner: The greatest books are the shortest books. Conner debates this for a while, before acknowledging that he has also heard of or purchased big books and never got down to reading them. Something just to add to his collection to say “Hey, I have this great classic”.
It’s a case of show, rather than wanting. Downbeat about this reality, Conner goes home drunk as a skunk and sits down at his computer. In anger, he cuts his book in half from four hundred pages to around two hundred, he changes the title to something more catchy and even creates a pseudonym called April May and decides to Email it to Winfrey, in sheer spite.
A world where his life becomes entangled with a personal death, dealing with an escaped prisoner, a con artist, and a schizophrenic
He breaks down, and realises what he’s doing and feels the shame of it all, the indignity of his actions. Sadly for him, spilling his drink on his computer would be the moment his entire world is turned upside down. A world where his life becomes entangled with a personal death, dealing with an escaped prisoner, a con artist, and a schizophrenic. Things wouldn’t be so bad if his agent was a little less of the back stabber, sadly for Conner, Campbell’s eye on the money and his own disillusionment with committing fraud deals severe consequences for him.
Conner is much like any other writer. He takes personal experience and turns it into a story to be read. Damn the emotion, damn the sensitivity, it isn’t that he’s out to create a quick buck, but Ivan Conner is a writer, and writers write. Personal devestation makes brilliant writing and reading, and Conner is aware of this.
Taking all his worst situations and personal losses, he tries to create a story out of everything. If it’s not a story, it’s a drama, and Conner will provide an Oscar winning performance to knock down any honest reaction of his rivals. Conner is not only competitive, but incapable of communicating with people in a real world basis. It often seems that he puts his friends and family into a story, and acts it out in real life, hoping that he could make something of it. Detachment from reality is perhaps his greatest weakness. And living with his mother at the age of forty. That’s pretty bad in itself.
Colin Bateman has created a book that is delight to read. The book isn’t original; one writers pursuit of writing and exhausting his creativity, to find inspiration has been done before. Indeed, Bateman mentions two books that are perfect examples, Rhinehart’s The Dice Man and Kerouac’s On The Road. Books about looking for something else; to write about, but also to feed their intellect and life.
Conner is such a character, and proves himself to be as such. Unlike the characters in the books mentioned, however, Conner is a pathetic character with no time for reality. He dwell sin his own arrogance and defeat of being disowned by his publisher. Self-absorbed, ego-maniacal and ignorant, in many ways you feel sorry for such a pithy example of humanity, and yet you can loathe him at the worst of times.
Bateman has managed to fuse some out and out comic moments with the misery of Conner’s life. Still angry with the world, he goes to pick up his son from school. Without so much as looking, he picks him, slaps him on the legs and takes him home crying. He tells his son to go upstairs and not to leave his room. That would of course be absolutely fine, if he hadn’t picked up the wrong child from school with the Police looking for a missing child wearing the same coat as his son.
It’s incredibly funny, with the sort of sharpness and imagination that you wish more writers would apply
The characters are engaging, thoughtful and manage to draw you into a world of anarchy and chaos. Chapter & Verse is read from a third person narrative perspective. Most of the focus revolves around Conner himself, as we are given glimpses of other people through the experience of Conner. Setting the book in England will perhaps make things a little more difficult for the non-natives to understand the significance of the Geography that is scaled in the title, however, it shouldn’t distract too much from the obvious focus which is the experience and journey that Conner and his companions go through in order to commit out right fraud.
There’s a definite intelligence and wit in Chapter & Verse that is lacking in many other books. A failing writer that is out of ideas goes to desperate lengths of gaining success while struggling with his guilt and jealousy of the other successes he will make through this adventure. He needs this to work, because he won’t know what to do if it doesn’t. It’s incredibly funny, with the sort of sharpness and imagination that you wish more writers would apply.
Bateman is using some personal experience of his own in order to create the atmosphere of a cut throat world in the universe of books, but perhaps there is also an a tongue-in-cheek comment on where we are when it comes to books, with the world of media negating any need for them, after all, “No one reads anymore”.
Verdict: Engrossing, entertaining, enjoyable. Three words that understate the quality of this title.