Martin John

Inadequate: The inadequate molester is the sex offender who least resembles social and behavioural norms. He is characterized as a social misfit, an isolate, who appears unusual or eccentric. He may be mentally ill and prefers non-threatening sexual partners.

Martin John, the novel, is an uncomfortable and fractured look inside the mind of a deeply disturbed man. With only a sentence or two on each of the first few pages, I initially wondered to myself, What kind of self-important post-modern trickery am I to suffer through here?, but I was wrong to be wary: What follows is a work of genius that could only have been written this way; it's not trickery but necessity. Probably my favourite read of the year.

Martin John, the man, is trying to avoid doing it (it's pointed out that it is never defined, but we do see examples), and in order to keep himself in check, Martin John does his Circuits – both at tube stations and at work (check his card!) – he maintains a painfully full bladder, keeps track of the letter P in the news*a*ers, monitors and memorialises the Eurovision Song Contest in towering stacks of news*a*ers and videocassettes, honours the Arrangement to visit Noanie on Wednesdays, calls his mother, and blaguards about Beirut (oh, the golden-shod!). Despite his efforts, there will always be Meddlers, and when Baldy Conscience moves in upstairs, Martin John can recognise that the Meddlers have become organised (I just recently learned about Gang Stalking, and I can only imagine what would happen to Martin John if he had access to the internet and its positive feedback loop of fellow paranoiacs). When he backslides and winds up in custody, who is Martin John to call but his mam?

What are you doing in that place? What has you in there at all? Tell me what is happening, Martin John? And the only rabble that would come back from him down the line was that old religious rabble. A rabble she didn’t raise him to, she’d insist.

I didn’t raise you to be saying this. Put that phone down right now. Phone me back when you’ve sense to make. But as soon as he’d go to replace the receiver she’d shriek at him in a vocal register akin to a buzzard’s.

If you dare put down this phone on me Martin John as God is my judge I won’t be forgiven for what I’ll do. Come here to me and heed my words and if you don’t I’ll tell those fellas to lock you up. D’ya hear now?

He heard, he never failed to hear, the bellow of incarceration and he was certain the paper, the walks, the guarding, every miserable minute of it was preferable to incarceration.

As the reader is placed inside the mind of such a mentally disturbed character, I was prone to sympathise with the urgency of his compulsions, but as Martin John does some truly terrible things (in the present and in flashback), this book becomes about other issues: about the impotence of mental health facilities; the complacency of first responders; the failure of the family as an institution. Responsibility for Martin John gets kicked down the block, and as he has no real support systems or self-control, there's an inevitability to everything that happens. And yet, even the semi-omniscient narrator doesn't know what's going to happen, even as she breaks the fourth wall in describing mam's efforts (she who has compulsions of her own involving notes and teapots):

Martin John needed no details of her work. Only that she must go out now for a while but would be back soon enough. He was dangerous when he got information. Any small bit could set him off. It had, she reasoned, taken years to restrain him safely in the Chair. She was only doing what the doctors and those in authority refused to do. She was only doing what needed to be done with bad men. Bad men aren't good for us, she thought, resigned, the way you're probably thinking about how long this is taking to read or how uncomfortable that chair is. Say it. Say it now. It's uncomfortable. Time to shift the cushions behind your back.

Everything in the writing of this book is handled with a deft touch – the disjointedness reflects a muddled brain, there is often humour in the tragic, and although we want to understand Martin John, his actions are ultimately beyond understanding; what happened in the dentist office is monstrous and those chickens deserve to come home to roost. When I reached the last page, I flipped back to the front – to reread the opening pages with only a sentence or two on each – and I thought to myself, Aha, it couldn't have been done any other way. This is a stand out work that expands the limits of literature – this is why we read – and I hope that author Anakana Schofield continues to push at those limits.

I'm pretty excited that this year I was able to find and read the entire Giller Prize longlist before the winner is announced (with weeks to spare). If I were in charge, I'd give the prize to Martin John, and here is my ranked order of the contenders:

The longlist for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize in my order of ranking is:


Anakana Schofield - Martin John 
Marina Endicott - Close to Hugh
Patrick deWitt - Undermajordomo Minor
Heather O’Neill - Daydreams of Angels
Connie Gault - A Beauty 
André Alexis - Fifteen Dogs
Clifford Jackman - The Winter Family
Alix Hawley - All True Not a Lie in It
Rachel Cusk - Outline
Russell Smith - Confidence 
Samuel Archibald - Arvida 
Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

*Won by Fifteen Dogs; not my favourite but fine.