Book Footle: Dangerous Parking - Part Two

Well, I was right about one thing; Dangerous Parking doesn't get any less depressing.

But it does change in tone. The tone has been one of drifting backwards and forwards through time (the different characters introduced at focal points - Ray, Kirsten, Tiny - making it almost vignette-like in tone) and now the boundaries become ever more blurred. The halo of pain and disaster that descends around Noah as the cancer relentlessly returns to do battle with him makes it gradually more chaotic and sometimes near unreadable.

Not because it's badly written, but because it's written with astonishingly painful clarity. The ending truly is open (and I'm not going to give it away); you really have no idea if Noah is going to make it through the trauma. The filmic quality is accelerated and increased, the unreality of drifting between consciousness and unconciousness, life and death intensified by this.

Characterisation remains strong throughout. Sadly, there are no pleasant characters. I hated Noah's wife, the self-righteous Clare, who embodied everything I can't stand about women who try to inhabit the charmingly flippant school of femininity. It might have worked when Audrey Hepburn did it; by the time you get to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's Clementine you want to hurl punches. Or I do, at least. Clare's self-justification for various acts may be understandable given Noah's occasionally vile behaviour, but it's hard to accept and like. Etta is even worse, the mulatto temptress that is the least realistic of the characters, but still well drawn. I think Peter Howitt missed a trick in the casting of this one, opting for anaemic Alice Evans over a role which screams for someone like a young Erykah Badu. Still, without seeing the film it's probably unfair to judge.

It's hard to really sum up Dangerous Parking. I probably wouldn't read it again, because it's harrowing. But I do think it's a well-written, powerfully affecting book. It has affected moments too, and its filmic nature can get tiresome, but it's worth at least one look, and isn't easily forgotten. Why write if not for the immortality, after all?