Lights Out In Wonderland by DBC Pierre
Faber & Faber $38.95
Dirty But Clean is back with the third novel in what could be loosely termed his "Poor White Trash" trilogy. His first, the fresh and adventurous Vernon God Little, rocketed him to overnight fame and Booker Prize stardom, while his second, the freakishly complicated and, ultimately, overly contrived Ludmila's Broken English, crashed him roughly back down to earth.
And now, not to disappoint, Pierre takes us on another bewildering roller-coaster ride - from a mental asylum in rural England to a high-end Tokyo restaurant, and then, finally, into the bowels of one of Nazi Germany's architectural monstrosities in Berlin. Although it carries all the DNA of both previous works, the question is: will it be a return to form or simply more broken English?
Gabriel Brockwell, perhaps not unlike the younger Pierre, is dark matter: everyone he comes into contact with suffers. After a failed suicide at a psychiatric facility, Gabriel decides to kill himself properly. With death an imminent certainty, he becomes firmly ensconced in what he terms the "Limbo" - a place where he is free to chuck morals and good taste out the window and do as he pleases. And always in search of the Nimbus (the warm glow of intoxication) and the Enthusiasms (fate's fancy), one last "blow out" with his good friend Smuts, a chef in Tokyo, is called for. What could possibly go wrong?
Much later, with Smuts left trembling in the psychological rubble of his life, Gabriel decamps for Berlin with some harebrained scheme to find a bar his father used to run and put on the "mother" of all banquets before "checking out" permanently. Food and drink appear to preoccupy Gabriel and offer Pierre the freedom he relishes to wax lyrical about the decadence of consumption to his heart's content - it seems we must bear witness to Pierre's contradictory views on the benefits of drink and the evils of consumerism until our eyes bleed.
While Gabriel ponders the meaninglessness of his life and tries to get the banquet organised, he spends his days chugging back expensive wine, snorting snowploughs of cocaine, and smoking plantations of cigarettes - thus he does what he can to avoid reality, to forget the pain he inflicts on others, and to slow down any progress to adulthood and responsibility. The question is: can Gabriel sober up, face his hangover and finally turn the lights out in Wonderland, or is he destined to toast the Nimbus and carry on usual?
When Pierre wrote his first book, he just wanted to tell a story - and he did. But now, with people sitting up to take notice, he seems compelled to try to say something profound.
Sadly, though, all the "profound" things that Gabriel utters in Lights Out In Wonderland, don't translate into a satisfying story.
Steve Scott is an Auckland reviewer.
