Jeanette by Joe Simpson Walker (A Review by Martin Macaulay)

Chomu Press

$17/408 pages

‘Jeanette, is something the matter?’ In Joe Simpson Walker’s novel, people have a habit of asking Jeanette Hesketh ‘What’s the matter?’ Her parents, her teacher, her neighbours, her is-he-isn’t-he boyfriend – they all want to get to the bottom of what is Jeanette’s problem. Even Jeanette, messed up and confused, wrestles with her internal dualistic schism; is she a good or immoral girl? The reader, or to be specific, this reader also wondered aloud – what is the problem with Jeanette? Why did I struggle with her so?

By rights, it’s a book I should have taken to my heart. A diverse mix of characters live in her world, secrets and fetishes are buried below the fake veneer of suburban 50s / early 60s Britain. Illicit sex, foot fetishes, leathers, gags, whips, breaking and entering, transvestite dad, alternative manifestos, erotica and the underworld. With subjects like these, you’d expect the book to earn some level of cult status. The tale is told predominantly through Jeanette’s first-person perspective, alternating into the omniscient third person to peel back and reveal more of the other figures in her life. The opening sets a vivid scene:

With my neck gripped in the crook of his elbow he dragged me backwards into the house. I tried to struggle but was pulled off my balance and only his hold kept me from falling. We were in the kitchen. He swung me forwards and bent me over the table, and caught my right arm and twisted it behind me.

The assailant is Mark Child, a twenty-one year old neighbour. With his leathers, motorbike and rage against the world, he’s a veritable wild one. Jeanette’s relationship with Mark is the novel’s ballast that most events stem from. We later learn that Jeanette set up her own faux-abduction in an attempt to stop her father’s night-time liaisons when she is Valerie. Jeanette is under Child’s influence, but this dynamic shifts as the novel progresses and you get the sense that he needs her just as much as she is led by him.The novel paces along impressively with a decent share of sharp twists and turns but is often let down by Jeanette’s voice, which can be indistinct from other characters’ or just not that believable. In the beginning, I struggled with her deferential use of ‘Miss’ when talking to her teacher Sarah Thaine. This is supposed to underline that Jeanette is a school-age kid and denote the historical context where teachers were held in higher regard, but it never rang quite true. By the end of the novel, I was more accepting of it, but initially it really grated. It was a shame because I still feel there was a real opportunity to make Jeanette one of fiction’s more memorable central characters.

The novel is prefaced with the disclaimer This story takes place in the past.  People thought and acted differently then. The implied meaning being that this book contains some outmoded perceptions and prejudices. Whilst these viewpoints aren’t exactly rampant, there are enough references to Jim’s “condition” that jar and the author missed a real opportunity to explore the difficulties Jim/Valerie faced with greater depth and nuance. What was it like to be a transvestite in 50s Britain with a wife and child? Instead I found myself sorting out rehashed, clichéd misconceptions and wearied prejudices from the characterisation. Yes, we know it was a different time, but this isn’t an excuse to dust down worn rhetoric from fifty-odd years ago and put them back into print. Some real value and serious weight could have been added simply be telling the story of being a transvestite dad in 50s Britain. The use of language becomes lazy and reverts to stereotype; Valerie purrs, Jim simply says.

Subtlety isn’t the book’s strength. The author would do better to tell us less and reveal more. The thing is, throughout the book there is plenty of intrigue but the reader isn’t allowed to build up a sense of anticipation. The revealing is done clumsily and overtly:

In hindsight, Jeanette had been acting strangely for some time before “the incident.”

Why tell us about an “incident” upfront? Why not drop in some more subtle pointers? This approach reminded me of a poor soap opera’s script, heavy handed and MAKING SURE THE READER UNDERSTANDS. Where there was an opportunity for the author to make up some lost ground and paint a decent back-drop, it felt lazy and unoriginal. Consider:

Child had a political message. He’d told me about it. There were international gangs of Jews who controlled all the money in the world and told governments what they could and couldn’t do. At the same time they were secretly backing Communism, which weakened free peoples’ will power and sense of right and wrong everywhere; I didn’t exactly follow why, but that suited their plans. Jews and Reds were both equally bad and impossible to trust. We needed a new young leader who could destroy them. That’s what Child said.

Come on, really? Is that the best conspiracy we could come up with – Commies and Jews? I never really believed in Mark Child, nor what he was rallying against. Although Jeanette had her flaws I finished the novel and she still resonated somewhere within me. Mark and his manifestos were second-rate, poorly fleshed-out and bordering on parody. As a result, when the author introduces a variety of fetishes to the reader I began to suspect I was reading a corrupt Enid Blyton novel;  perhaps Five Get Bound and Gagged Again or Seven’s Secret Punishment.   Stepping back, there is a lot in Jeanette that, in theory, should make it a novel worth reading. Unfortunately, it is poorly executed which is a shame because I believe she deserved better.

*

~Martin Macaulay lives, writes and works in Scotland~