Dodgy London reading: "Three Brothers" by Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd's recent work has tended to be in the realm of non-fiction: biography (including, famously, of London), history, and, generally, London-themes generally, for example, the excellent London Under. However, Ackroyd originally made his name as a novelist, bursting on the scene with his extraordinary Hawksmoor, which, as I have related before, had me spending my lunch breaks back in 1987 scouring East London for Hawksmoor churches, just to see if I could detect the sheer weirdness communicated so powerfully in Ackroyd's novel. In any case, since then, Ackroyd has been more or less a fixture on my must-buy list (with, obscurely, the exception of the biographies of people, an omission I should probably rectify). 

Over the years, through both his fiction and non-fiction, Ackroyd has become the undisputed, though unofficial writer-laureate of London. His vision of the city is of an almost living thing (hence a "biography"), with innumerable layers of history and experience piled on top of each other, with the London-past frequently breaking through into London-present. In his novels, this has proved a powerful source of mystery and strangeness, with the city seemingly living according to a separate notion of time, while in his non-fiction, there is a constant emphasis on how London's past impinges on and conditions its present in a multitude of unexpected ways. 

I hadn't heard of Three Brothers before I spotted in in the bookshop, but was of course intrigued. It marked a return to the novel for Ackroyd, and a uncharacteristically recent timeframe, opening in the postwar years and unfolding in the rather grimy, dodgy London of the sixties and seventies (not so swinging in this book). The story is one of three brothers, born in the gritty, partially blitzed streets of Camden Town just after the War, coincidentally on the very same day, 8 May, in successive years. Their life is not an easy one; their mother abandons the family early on, while the father, a would-be writer, can do little better than pick up low-skilled jobs, first as a nightwatchman, subsequently as a long-distance lorry driver. The boys are left pretty much to their own devices, and to find their own ways in the city. The three have opposing characters: the oldest, Harry, is a go-getter, ambitious and hustling, willing to compromise to make his way in Fleet Street where he rises to edit a national newspaper; the second, Daniel, is the academic, who makes it to grammar school, whence Cambridge, and becomes a member of the newly-empowered chattering classes; the youngest, Sam, is the sensitive soul, unable to hold down a proper job, but somehow more in touch with other people and the city in which he lives.


The plot of the novel centres on a distinctly dodgy slum landlord, Asher Ruppta, who becomes the point of intersection, through an outrageous (deliberately so) series of coincidences, between the very separate existences of the three brothers and other significant characters who make their appearances. Ruppta is an almost Dickensian character, standing in for a distinctly dodgy London world of shady deals, low grade political corruption and cynical exploitation of the underclass. A counterpoint is provided by another character, also highly reminiscent of a Dickens type, Sparker (aka Sparkle, Sparkie), a streetwise, cynical, but basically warm-hearted gay prostitute, whose client list becomes a key artefact driving the plot. 

Peter Ackroyd, writer-laureate of London

Ackroyd does dodgy London very well. The slums of East London, gradually being replaced by new council estates in these years, the pubs and backstreets, the occasional sortie into the political and business grandees of Highgate are nicely evoked. So too are the literary and publishing worlds, catty and backbiting, as well as the early, pre-legalisation, gay scene. In all of this, bar the big business/politics, one detects autobiography. Indeed, this is known, Ackroyd is writing at least in part from direct personal experience here and, at one point, makes the personal dimension explicit in the text. But that's not all. The story is full of strange dreamlike episodes, intrusions of the weird, seemingly from London's past and mainly (though not exclusively) involving the more "connected" Sam, which add a layer of ghost story to the plot. 

This is in itself familiar territory for Ackroyd, but it somehow remains more detached from the main storyline than in his earlier novels. I was left a little puzzled and frustrated, that the weird episodes did not converge more with the central story. Even the final lines, which tie in a convent of mysteriously appearing and disappearing nuns (we gather somehow from London's past) seems a bit shoehorned in. In fact, the comparison with the skill and atmospherics of Ackroyd's earlier novels left me with a vague sense of disappointment with this novel. It almost seems as if Ackroyd threw this novel together a little too quickly, or as if it were a kind of side project. (Which itself seems strange if this really is some sort of autobiographical statement.) The main characters also seem a little too schematic for such an accomplished writer, less genuine characters than stand-ins for ideas. It is, I confess, a surprise, given who the writer is, and I wondered if I had missed something in my quick seaside reading of the book. Checking a few reviews however, opinion seems fairly similar - this is a book with Ackroydian qualities, but somehow not quite up to his usual extraordinary standards.

Don't get me wrong, this is an enjoyable, quick, plot-driven read and has numerous strengths, but if I were to suggest starting on Ackroyd, this is not the place to do it.