“I for one find it an annoyance when a story doesn’t do what it’s meant to do, don’t you boy?” queries a mysterious Baroness in the new novel from Patrick deWitt, whose last book The Sisters Brothers was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011.
What this story, Undermajordomo Minor, is exactly meant to do is hard to say, however. Like its author’s previous work, it is so genre-defying and distinctly odd that defining its purpose seems moot. This is a sort of gothic fairytale whose era and location are undefined (possibly medieval eastern Europe — there is no electric light or plumbing — but then again there are trains). DeWitt, a Canadian living in the US, borrows from the picaresque tradition, with its voyages, endless wars and dim-witted hero, and at points from magical realism.
Lucien “Lucy” Minor is a hapless young man from the hamlet of Bury, where not much happens. Lucy is unlucky in love and life, as well as being pompous and a consummate liar. Until, that is, his father dies and Lucy sets off to take up the position of assistant to the majordomo, or steward, of the mysterious Castle Von Aux, where a mad Baron steals around at night banging on doors and chomping on rats and where Lucy’s predecessor appears to have met an untimely death.
Meanwhile, outside the castle walls, a 1984-esque war is going on, for which no one can quite remember the motivation or who exactly the enemy is. Lucy befriends a family who robbed him on the train and falls for the daughter Klara. The sincerity of his affection, though, as is the case with all sentiment in this novel, is difficult to judge, given the strange language — so hyperbolic and yet disassociated — with which it is described.
Lucy is determined to make an impression but isn’t exactly worldly-wise: he gags when he drinks liquor and splutters when he smokes. He is unerringly polite, even when other men makes eyes at his woman — until, that is, the one occasion when he loses control completely. His few attempts to better himself or the world around him seem laughably ill-fated.
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Like the sepia detail of a Wes Anderson film, the writing here is both eerily precise and yet at the same time abstract, making it difficult to know what to believe. DeWitt is a true original, conjuring up dark and hilarious images. The majordomo, Mr Olderglough, is an “elegantly skeletal” man with a “deeply antisocial” pet bird named Peter that has a look expressing “legitimate hatred” (can a bird really express hatred? And why legitimately so?). Mr Olderglough undermines his own relevance right off the bat. “I’m just making conversation at this point,” he admits dismissively about something in which he seemed wholly invested just a moment earlier.
This is a bizarre, darkly funny, weepy, passionate and yet often, like its hero, seemingly aimless book. If you are a beginning, middle and end sort of person, then it probably isn’t for you, with a narrative muddled by an impenetrably surreal presentation. If though you are after something completely new and you can take the time to get to grips with its wackiness, it is worth the effort. In the end, it is a story about love, discovery and fantasy for its own sake, a real storyteller’s tale.
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt, Granta, 304pp, £12.99. To buy this book for £11.69, visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712134