Burning Down the House

Ian Pattison

Available on Amazon by order or on Amazon Kindle

Review by Brian Beacom

To say Ian Pattison’s new novel (set slightly in the future) is ambitious is rather like saying Nicola Sturgeon quite fancies a wee shot at becoming president of an independent Scotland. The writer who once chronicled the wonderfully chaotic, comedic life of Rab C Nesbitt, has now sought to meld the subject of post Scottish independence schisms with the experiences of Ireland in 1922, a collapsed personal relationship – and an emotional meltdown.

Oh, and just for good measure, the ghost of Michael Collins becomes his roomie.

How do we enter this slightly dystopian world? Ivan is a writer who lives in Glasgow’s west end and once enjoyed a successful stint in television writing but has to adjust to the fact that television wants a younger/cheaper/more compliant version of himself.

Ivan is also bonkers in love with Emily but has in fact made himself single because he “self-sabotaged” his relationship. How? Easy if you try. Having failed to request her hand in marriage after crossing the two-three-year togetherness threshold, Ivan took her off on holiday, not to the beautiful Bosphorus as promised, but to wet, dreary Cork.

What was he thinking of? It transpires that Ivan wrote a recent play about Irish revolutionary Michael Collins and remains obsessed with the man, choosing to visit the places Collins’s convoy travelled to on the day of his death in 1922. Needless to say, it wasn’t just Emily’s wool coat that became damp.

The starting point for visiting the life of Ivan the terrible lover however is a self-inflicted boating accident. The writer finds himself concussed in hospital, and then evaluated. “‘The psychiatrist would like to see you.’ She studies my notes. ‘It says here you write for a living.’ ‘No, I write to stay sane.’ ‘It doesn’t appear to be working.’ ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’”

On leaving hospital, Ivan’s obsessions with Irish independence, the politics of liberation and unity mount. Meanwhile, he wonders if he can reunite with Emily. Both feelings, we appreciate, are tied at the ankle by a stretchy schoolboys’ snake belt, which results in him running a shoogly, three-legged race towards an unmarked finish line.

Just to add to the angst, the writer hopes to write a documentary comparing the post-independence experiences of Ireland and Scotland embracing Republican and Unionist standpoints. But the TV company wants less James Connolly and more Billy Connolly.

And then the ghost appears. Michael Collins. While Ivan argues for the right to write about the complexities of independence, he can’t get “Mick” out of his head. The pair feud. They fight. They become friends. (Sort of).

Yet, the relationship between the man who was assassinated by a fellow revolutionary and the obsessed writer is utterly compelling, as dark as a sniper’s balaclava – and very funny.

At one point, the pair compare the price of a modern coffee and slice of cake (“four quid”) with the cost of revolutionary bullets in 1922. Collins suggests: “In the War of Independence the price of a bullet was what, three pence? At 240 pence to the pound, there’s 320 British soldiers you could have shot back then for the price of a coffee and a bit of cake.”

Pattison has not only written a (partly autobiographical?) book about a confused character re-evaluating his life (the scales are brought out to weigh up what’s been achieved so far); it’s also a searing, and very funny tale about how we can move forward on reaching a certain age.

It’s about a sense of being thwarted, it’s about seizing moments. It’s about accepting the ghosts in our heads are there for a reason. And treating them to coffee and cake.