Will Smith writes for the sitcom Veep and appeared in The Thick of It as Peter Mannion’s useless special adviser, Phil Smith. He’s also the author of a thriller-ish novel, Mainlander, which I’d been meaning to read ever since I met him at a Literary Death Match last summer (for the uninitiated, LDM is a rowdy literary talent show that takes place in front of a live audience), but only picked up last week, when the paperback came out.
While the critic who described it as “The Wicker Man meets Fargo” may have been exaggerating somewhat, I see what they were getting at. Mainlander does have a distinct whiff of Anthony Shaffer’s film about it, not least because it is set on an island, in this case Jersey. Islands are purest catnip for the storyteller: everyone knows everyone else’s business; no one can leave, or not easily; and outsiders are frequently unwelcome. Jersey, of course, also comes with a Nazi past and a substantial number of millionaires, which gives Smith’s novel a singular flavour – though even better, for me at least, is the fact that it’s set in 1987, the (sad, strange) year before I went to university, a time he captures rather well. When his teacher hero, Colin, listens to U2 on his drive to work, convincing himself that their (awful) lyrics speak to his situation (he’s the lonely mainlander of the title), it’s excruciating and yet endearing, too. I believed in the poor sap to the degree that I could almost smell his aftershave (Kouros by Yves St Laurent, surely).
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