Douglas Cunningham is a 21-year-old aspiring writer who, after being “booted out” of both university and his “digs”, spends his days sleeping on the tube and his nights in A&E waiting rooms. One night in A&E, Cunningham befriends Llewellyn Smith, whose stitches have split following a heart operation. They bond over a love of books, and Llewellyn offers Cunningham a spare room in the Acton flat he shares with his fiancee Aoife and their baby. Cunningham develops a burning crush on Aoife and a broken heart, as the entertaining narrative develops into a sharply sketched love triangle.
“For their heart studieth destruction, / And their lips talk of mischief”, is the novel’s epigraph, taken from Proverbs 24:2. Much of the mischievous talking takes place in pubs – a key setting in many of Warner’s novels – in a vivid, vernacular dialogue set into high relief by pictorial prose. As it’s 1984, the pair talk much of aspiration, failure and class conflict in Thatcher’s Britain, while also philosophising about the nature of writing. In a novel filled with drinking and thinking, the thinking becomes more engrossing .
The pair are obsessed with people, but also with prose. They dream of becoming great novelists, but: “You need time and money to write a fucking book,” bemoans Llewellyn, who yearns for “tranquillity of mind and of circumstances” – something ever more elusive as their lives spiral into emotional and financial chaos.
As well as the desire for intellectual fulfilment, Warner compellingly captures the craving for close connection, the “desperate touches of fingertips”, a yearning for intimacy.
“Nearly all our failures are failures of imagination,” remarks Cunningham – and in exploring such failures, this inventive, energetic novel itself becomes an often-impressive feat of the imagination.
Adorning the cover of the paperback edition is a picture of a decrepit typewriter missing multiple letters – a fitting image for a novel that thrives on exploring the gaps in narratives. For amid the lips talking of mischief, Warner also subtly mines the silences in relationships, in a story that resonates poignantly with that which remains unsaid.
Their Lips Talk of Mischief is published by Faber (£8.99). Click here to order it for £6.99
