During her short life, the poet Jane Jarmain agonised over the placement of a single comma or a semicolon; in her afterlife, which sees the startling growth of her reputation, she becomes a Sylvia Plath-like icon to a new generation, "namechecked by indie bands and used as a reference point for girly gloom by journalists anxiously surfing the wave of the Zeitgeist".
Martin Stone, the narrator of Sean O'Brien's darkly witty first novel, is in no doubt that Jane's widower, Alex, to whom control of her poetry has passed, is an unworthy keeper of her flame. Bitter and boozy, Stone is a lecturer at a small university in the Welsh Marches, who looks back in anger to provide his own version of the events that led to Jane's death.
His story moves swiftly into flashback. Thirty years earlier, in the broiling summer of 1976, Martin, Alex and Jane, not long out of Cambridge, join Martin's girlfriend Susie at a country cottage in the Marches. There they plan to write poetry and edit a small magazine. Dope, booze and sex are to be pleasant accompaniments to the launch of literary careers.
Rivalry soon enters this "muddled Arcadia". Martin is more than half in love with the enigmatic Jane, and resents Alex's casual treatment of her. Alex, unable fully to acknowledge that Jane has poetic gifts he cannot match, inflicts petty humiliations on his wife.
Further serpents soon slither into this tainted Eden. Diane, a sexy American film-maker, pitches up to bed the easily seduced Alex and to arrange a bacchanalian party. Two German anarchists and a gang of Hell's Angels are among the guests. Drinks are spiked with acid, clothes are shed and prized possessions cast onto bonfires; and Martin witnesses Alex's attempt to burn his wife's manuscripts. Jane reacts badly to the acid and increasingly retreats into herself as the days pass. Martin and Susie glimpse "the steadily growing distance between her and the safety of the mundane", but are powerless to pull her back from the brink.
Advertisement
Afterlife has its faults. The characters' obsession with literature becomes irritatingly implausible; more significantly, Jane needs to be a stronger character. Martin speaks of "the marvellous creature she was", but O'Brien fails to bring her to life as such. Early in the book, Martin talks of "that reticence of hers, that oddly dramatic talent for not being there". Surely, a talent for not being there is undesirable in the person around whom the plot circles.
Nonetheless, this is an absorbing first work of fiction by a much-admired poet. It is a sharp and unforgiving portrait of literary dreams and jealousies; and of the loss of youthful innocence viewed from the "afterlife of adulthood".
Afterlife by Sean O'Brien
Picador £14.99 pp304