Mr. Lynch's Holiday
After decades as a bus driver in Birmingham, Dermot Lynch is taking his first overseas trip in Catherine Flynn鈥檚 third, utterly charming novel, Mr. Lynch鈥檚 Holiday.
The newly retired widower chooses Spain, not for the sunshine, but to visit his only child, Eamonn, who was supposed to be living a sophisticated expatriate life with his wife. Instead, the busman鈥檚 holiday turns out to be just-in-the-nick-of-time rescue.
Dermot arrives, on foot, to find that Eamonn鈥檚 wife, Laura, is gone. Eamonn tells his father it's just for a few days because he's ashamed to admit she has left him and returned to England. In her absence, Eamonn is barely functional 鈥� sleeping past noon, playing computer chess, and ignoring his online English students as the shoddily built new condo crumbles around him.
In fact, the only beings thriving in Lomaverde are the feral cats, whose numbers increase by the day.
鈥淏ecause Lomaverde was not in decline, because it had rather simply failed to take off, its death was more difficult to perceive. Awareness of its failure to thrive was slow and incremental, similar to Eamonn and Laura鈥檚 own gradual realization, four months after arriving, that the pool was emptying,鈥� O鈥橣lynn writes. For the first few days neither of them mentioned it, each assuming they were imagining it. But as the water level continued to sink, there was no room for doubt 鈥� It took an age for the pool to empty completely, the water seeping slowly through a tiny crack. It was peculiarly painful to watch.鈥�
O鈥橣lynn鈥檚 first novel, 鈥淲hat Was Lost,鈥� won the 2007 Costa First Novel Award and was long-listed for both the Booker and Orange prizes.
Her third novel is altogether lovely without ever turning sentimental. O鈥橣lynn is wry on the subject of capitalism, the expatriate life, and the resoundingly popped housing bubble, the echo of which seems to have permanently deafened any number of characters, preventing them from hearing just how self-centered and self-pitying they鈥檝e become.
The novel鈥檚 emotional center is the gentle, increasingly worried Dermot, who charms the handful of other residents in Lomaverde, a closed community united by economic failure and paranoia. There have been burglaries, protests from the families of unpaid construction workers, and other oddities, which are magnified by the development鈥檚 isolated location in Spain鈥檚 hilly, hot scrublands. (鈥淚mpressive mountain views,鈥� the brochure promised optimistically.) Dermot, a tower of strength and practicality who thinks nothing of strolling four miles to the grocery store when Eamonn鈥檚 car doesn鈥檛 work, is befuddled at the state he finds his son.
鈥淜athleen always said Eamonn had been graced with brains, not brawn, but Dermot couldn鈥檛 see that it took much brawn to put a line of sealant around a bath, nor any evidence of brains in not doing so. There was scant furniture, and what there was seemed placed without any particular thought or care,鈥� he thinks. 鈥淚t felt a makeshift rather than a welcoming place, the desire to leave evident in every corner.鈥�
Eamonn was going to be the literary novelist, but Laura is the one who actually writes a book, much to his resentment and self-loathing. Actually, self-loathing has now become a perpetual state for Eamonn, who thought that the big move would give him a chance to reinvent himself, only to discover that he can鈥檛 stand who he鈥檚 become.
While some critics have wondered how any child could have ever become estranged from Dermot, O鈥橣lynn covers this in the plot. And, given his father鈥檚 sheer size and strength, coupled with his lack of formal education, it鈥檚 easy to see how Eamonn would be simultaneously ashamed and afraid he doesn鈥檛 measure up.
鈥淚t seemed to him that the key achievement of his education had been to alienate him from both the people he had mixed with as a child and the people he went on to mix with as an adult. In both worlds, he felt adrift, bobbing erratically between feelings of inadequacy and loathing,鈥� Eamonn thinks.
鈥淢r. Lynch鈥檚 Holiday,鈥� also jumps back in time to Dermot鈥檚 introduction to England, when he moved to Birmingham from Ireland and met Kathleen. Their marriage was a long one, but not necessarily a happy one.
鈥淒ermot studied the backs of his hands. 鈥業 always loved her.鈥� He placed them flat on his knees. 鈥楤ut I鈥檝e been less lonely since she鈥檚 gone.鈥�
That empty, cracked infinity pool also serves as the chief metaphor for the novel.
鈥淚 think sometimes you lose people and you barely know it at the time. It starts as a small crack. That鈥檚 all it is. It takes years, a lifetime, before you notice what went out through the crack,鈥� Dermot tells a character about the younger brother he was separated from as a teenager.
Fortunately, as O鈥橣lynn shows, Dermot is just the man for a repair job.
Yvonne Zipp is the Monitor's fiction critic.
