Shaun de Waal
THE ABOMINATION by Paul Golding (Picador)
‘High summer in a sweltering London club, and I’m getting into my drunken stride after midnight, rubbing sweat with the shoulders that pass by, and thinking vaguely about another drink, or about cruising the pissoirs, or about peeling off my vest and closing my eyes and drifting through the dry ice into the dancing multitude, which is a great safe wave to me, when suddenly the lights blast on, white, as on a stage, and the music goes dead, a bang of silence, and it seems that the air-conditioning’s packed up and they can’t get anyone to fix it this late at night, and the management regrets that for reasons of safety our club has to close so could we finish our drinks up and remember to collect our coats on the way out, and no dawdling on the street, lads, and don’t make a racket out there; and get yourselves safely home; hurry up please, it’s time.”
This is the opening paragraph, the opening sentence, of Paul Golding’s debut novel. And he starts as he means to go on. For 500 pages.
The Abomination is the story of Santiago Moore Zamora, half-Spanish and half- English, and the burgeoning of his troublesome sexuality; how, in rebellion against hypocrisy, repression and betrayal by loved ones, he becomes what one might call a militant aesthete -and a sexual gourmand.
At primary school he seduces a teacher; at high school, he submits to the advances of another. This makes a fascinating contrast to Mark Behr’s new novel, Embrace, which deals with similar issues. Betrayal is the keynote of both texts:the pet name Santiago’s mother uses for him is Iago, yet he is more betrayed than betraying. And the legacy of this intimate treachery is a deep, lasting self-loathing that permeates the novel, making even its sensuality sinister.
Golding’s book is as engrossing as it is exhausting, thanks mainly to its extraordinary prose. Those long, looping serial sentences describe with lush rococo excess everything from Santiago’s mother’s couture to a truly repellent sexual encounter (with the second teacher). This is the kind of thing Golding can spend pages on; he’s not nearly so interested in dialogue. One has to admire his willingness to be difficult, to be different.
Yet he is able to write a good short sentence (“Instead he plunges me with his dark tongue”), so one hopes that next time round he will create an equally intriguing fiction that is not quite such a long haul.