Martin is a man of destiny – or at least we are assured
as much with mounting insistence throughout Swallowing the Sun.
He has escaped, by dint of stubborn grit, from his brutal
childhood in a Belfast slum, but in his new middle-class
existence he feels awkward and uncomfortable. He is suspicious of
this bourgeoisie to which he suddenly belongs, and is overawed by
money and soft furnishings. Furthermore, he has an old taste for
violence (instilled of course by his father) that is only lying
dormant. And when things in the cosy family unit start to fall
apart, the old horror returns. David Parks makes so much of these tragic totems that you
feel, after a while, like enquiring as to the precise nature of
Martin’s relations with his mother, and whether he has
consulted an oracle recently. But to give away anything much of
the plot would be to spoil the most enjoyable aspect of this
novel. Parks tells a good yarn, and the pace of the narrative mounts
steadily and effectively, even if it seems to lack an ending. But
Parks isn’t content just to say what happens next; he wants to
have a deep and meaningful dialogue with you. Sometimes this
means that he overloads sentences, describing characters’
thoughts with overweight diction, as when Martin has a moment of
reflection in the school hall. However, Parks can show great
sensitivity to the significance of places and objects; a mobile
phone that reappears several times, effectively registers the
shifting boundary between public and private speech in the novel. The objects in Martin’s museum form a lapidary bulwark against
the ravages of time and Martin’s demons. David Parks might
sometimes sound like he’s swallowed a thesaurus rather than the
sun, but he writes compellingly when telling a story and not
thinking about fate. Bloomsbury, hardback, £14.99ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2004
Swallowing the Sun – David Parks
