The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Carey

Engagement is a tricky word. It’s a double-edged sword. You can hear about a film or an album or a book and find yourself thinking ‘that’s for me’. Or you read a review. Catch someone talking about it on a podcast. Their enthusiasm transfers over to you and, again, the same thought gets in your head.

That’s for me.

Or, with books, you can sometimes ignore the cardinal rule – you can pick one up and judge it by the cover alone. Don’t get me wrong, book cover designers, it’s a system which can work. After all, that’s how I first found Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion’s comic Preacher. Browsing through a little second hand bookshop in Tenterden, down in Kent, and there it was. The first Preacher collection. Buried in a box by a doorway. It’s also how I first got into the late Christopher Fowler’s fantastic Bryant and May crime novels. Wandering around Borders in Leicester, years ago, my eyes were caught by that first paperback cover for Full House Dark. Little did I realise how many books, and how many strange crimes and London folklore, that one glimpse of an art deco style cover was going to bring into my life over the next few years.

   When I first heard about The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Carey it was through a podcast. The always brilliant Backlisted. Their hosts and guests will pick a slightly forgotten old book they love and spend an hour or so discussing its merits. The week they dug into Carey’s book, they had Max Porter on as a guest. Porter, if you’ve not come across him before, is a great writer. His books always carry a strange, weaving, brooding atmosphere through them. Lanny, which came out a couple of years ago, is a subtle piece of modern folk unease. A little boy going missing in a village where one old myth refuses to be forgotten without taking a tribute from the population. Only the book is told through the eyes of different characters who live around the sudden absence of the boy. Each section feeling poetic, unleashed, tangled together, unwilling to play nicely. It’s feels like Midsummer Murders and Twin Peaks had a baby, which they slipped into the poetry section to keep it safe. Except the note you’d find pinned to that baby would be a health and safety warning.

   Porter was incredibly enthusiastic when it came to The Horse’s Mouth, and it was easy to see why as I started to read it myself. There is a quality in Carey’s writing which you can find reflected in Porter’s work. Especially if you’re drawing a line between this book and Porter’s strange dissection of the last days of Francis Bacon. Carey’s prose pitches you into these almost sudden, jarring diversions as our narrator Gulley Jimson gets distracted by the world around him. Jimson, who’s a struggling artist not long out of prison when we meet him, is a man with a chip on his shoulder. If not a whole bag of chips. Or an entire chain of fish and chip shops. He’s quick to lose his temper. He’s forever looking to self-destruct or push the world away from him. He’s not a kind or likeable man in any way, and he does not pretend to be. He does, however, have an eye for capturing the world around him in paint. It seizes his attention, and his narrative dances off on these flights of pure creation.

At first, these passages are breathtaking. Carey’s interpretation of how a temperamental, defensive artist might suddenly see the sun or London or the crowds of people around him shine with clammy, boisterous brilliance. Even after listening to Porter and the Backlisted panel discuss the book, I don’t think I was quite ready for how engaging it was going to be.

This, I thought, is definitely for me.

   Only, after the first fifty or so pages, I hit a problem. It’s a problem I’ve had a few times when it comes to the words literary fiction. The plots just lost me. It’s not that some literary books are overly complicated. It’s not that they’re pretentious. It’s more that, for someone who has read many a genre driven book in his life, they end up feeling flat. As strong as Jimson’s narrative can be at times, it is describing a story that didn’t really move me. And it definitely didn’t feel like it needed to be as long as it turned out to be.

   The folks on Backlisted had said it wasn’t an easy read, and I think I maybe misunderstood what they meant. I thought they were talking about the more poetic sections. Or maybe Jimson’s attitude to the other characters around him - especially when it comes to some of the women in his life. Gulley’s words on women are, well, not great. Admittedly, in a book like this, it feels clear that they’re part of the character. They’re not there to try and change your opinion. They just jar on you now more than they might’ve back when the book first came out.

   Through the likes of Backlisted I have tried some heavier, wilder books. Books that I wouldn’t have heard of without their recommendations. They haven’t all been easy. A few have left me a little cold or disinterested. Anthony Powell’s A Question of Upbringing. Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller. Robert Aickman’s The Late Breakfasters. Some, though, have been revelations. I cleared a day to read the strange, dislocating psychological descent of Under the Volcano, and I don’t regret an hour of it. David Seabrook’s All the Devils are Here wasn’t always what I’d call an easy read, but it left you with historic sand catching between your toes and a dark fog rolling in through the harbour of your imagination (in a good way). Andrew Hankinson’s You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life left me breathless.

For me, though, The Horse’s Mouth was just missing some of that spark. It left me unmoved. The wonder of those early passages just didn’t have enough purchase to keep hold of my attention. The characters all started to feel like caricatures. The plot felt like it was happening across the street from me. Or across the city. It just passed me by, like an argument on a train carriage we were all stuck with until we reached our stop.

   I have no doubt that this book has a huge number of fans out there. And I’ll hold my hands up. I’ve had it a few times where I’ve picked up a book I’ve been looking forward to starting, only to find I’ve not been in the right frame of mind at the time. This could very easily be the case here. It’s been a rough couple of months and Gulley’s world and world view are not particularly palatable when you’re already struggling. All I know is, for the past week or so that I’d been reading The Horse’s Mouth, I’d also started to think about what I’m going to read next. That’s never a good sign. More than once, I’m ashamed to say, I even started taking other books off the shelf and reading their blurbs. Which is the sort of behaviour which can lead to that most dreaded of sins – the half finished book.

   So, I guess right now, the kindest thing to say is that this book wasn’t for me. In some respects, I’m still glad I read it. I’m glad I got to experience the way Carey could explore the artist’s lens for studying the unfriendly city around them. The way he could dive into the obsessions which drive a man to try and turn his shoulder to the world, even when he wants to borrow a few quid or torment the people who tried to ruin his life. I just wish I would’ve got more from the experience than feeling like I met a group of characters who I feel no rush to meet again.