The Hopeless Life Of Charlie Summers by Paul Torday
Weidenfeld & Nicolson $38.99
At the opening of Paul Torday's sharp new satirical novel, Hector Chetwode-Talbot — better known, thankfully, as Eck — seems a decent chap, if very ordinary. He is ex-British army, having got out after a nasty special op in Afghanistan when some civilians were killed. It haunts him. Not particularly clever at anything, and he knows it, Eck's been looking around for a new job and finds himself swept into an unexpected career as a "greeter" for a whiz-bang financial company in London run by an old school pal called Bilbo.
Eck, who narrates this tale, has come into the company in the early years of the new millenium, when "money flowed around the world as it had never done before". Everyone is borrowing cash to finance the purchase of material things for crazy, spiralling prices, especially property. Eck doesn't really understand how the market works but he doesn't need to — all he has to do is persuade people he knows from his school and army days to invest with Mountwilliam Partners, which will, in turn, lend out money and engage in activities none of us understand much either: subordinated debt, trade on margins, swap futures contracts.
Eck's getting paid well, so he buys an Audi and drives to the south of France to play golf and drink wine with his old friend, wealthy Henry Newark. There, they meet a man who looks remarkably like Eck, but a scruffier version, a "rather grubby-looking man in his forties, wearing a navy blue blazer ... anointed with dandruff". His name is Charlie Summers.
Charlie attaches himself to them at dinner on their last night in France, and reveals he's been having trouble with the tax people in Britain. "What sort of business are you in?" Eck asks him. "Dog food," replies Charlie. When they part ways, a slightly drunk Henry tells Charlie to look him up if he's ever in his part of Gloucestershire. Most people would never take that invitation literally. But Charlie does.
And so begins a bout of tragi-comic errors, bumblings and blunders, which draw Charlie Summers ever closer into the lives of Henry and Eck. Eck's increasing doubts about his job, which just doesn't feel right, are mirrored by the fragility of Charlie's lifestyle, a man always trying the next get-rich-quick scheme, always failing, always letting everyone down. Eck feels equal measures of irritation and pity for him, feelings which Charlie himself appears to share despite a veneer of bravado which grows increasingly thin. But they are both essentially drifters.
There's another facet to Eck's rather sad life, He is pining for the love of a woman called Harriet, whose fiance — one of his best friends — has been killed in Iraq. It also becomes apparent that Mountwilliam Partners is engaging in fraudulent practices. Bilbo becomes a threatening figure.
Torday is a remarkable storyteller who never repeats himself (his earlier three novels Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce and The Girl on the Landing are all superb). His writing is effortless and incisive, and he is capable of great wit. Towards the end, Eck has cause to comment that "the websites had stirred up the desire for action among the jihadists of the valleys of North Lancashire". The money men would call it collateral time.
