Book Footle: Dangerous Parking - Part One

It's unusual of me to write a book review before I've finished the book. But I'm having such a visceral reaction to it that I feel the need to record it and compare at the end.

Dangerous Parking was Stuart Browne's only novel before his death in November 1999. We know this the minute we open the book and read the author notes. Does that have an impact on a book about an alcoholic struggling with deadly cancer in his bladder? Of course it does. It adds a layer of suspense (was Browne writing with hope? Despair?) that might not be there without it.

It's hard to like the hapless protagonist, Noah Arkwright. Not because he's a self-pitying idiot, a drunk, a drug addict and a pretentious twat. All those things could make him just a focus for our own insecurities and twattery. But because he's powered on pure, incandescent rage. The entire first half of the book has felt like mental assault and battery, from blood clots in the urethra to anarchic coke-fuelled binges that seem less appealing than pretty fucking stupid. Fully half the text seems to be in capitals, italics or both, with a completely cinematic personal dialogue raging in Noah's head the entire time.

Of course it's cinematic, though. Browne was an accomplished screenwriter and Dangerous Parking is so obviously a novel ready to be a film that they've already made one. He is unashamed about it. Noah is a film-maker and sees everything in those terms. If this book didn't wear its screenwriting heart on its sleeve it would seep out anyway, so instead it delights in it which makes it less irritating than it might be. There's also some elegant prose shuttled in between the occasionally self-conscious blokey banter. Browne is funniest when he doesn't seem to be trying to be.

The book can only enter into a more relaxed read from here; ironically this is because it's due to become ever more harrowing from this point on.

One can but read and see.