There was a time when ‘readability’ was the least important factor which the Booker Prize Jury took into consideration. At least that must’ve been the case back 1969 when they awarded the inaugural Booker to P.H. Newby for his novel ‘Something to Answer For’. Of course back then Booker Prize was some niche award that didn’t even have its ceremony and the winner was informed by post. The jury didn’t have to worry about sparking national debate with their choices. I see that many reviewers called this novel confusing, disjointed, with unlikeable characters and I’d like to tell them: ‘man up, please!’ Yes, it is difficult but it’s rewarding. It needs time, patience and attention. It’s like that girl who is so hard to turn on but once you dedicate some time to the task and figure it out, she’s fire. And this book is beautiful and it’s fire. It uses the strangest literary technique of an unreliable third person narrator. The third person is nominal only because in fact we are stuck in Townrow’s, the main character’s, head. And this head receives a blow quite early on and confounds Townrow. We share some of the frustration when he tries to piece everything together and decide who is a friend and who is a foe. The facts are few: it’s 1956, he came to Egypt to help Mrs Khoury, widow of his friend Ellie. Mrs Khoury believes her husband was murdered, so Townrow is there to offer support, help solve the mystery, con Mrs Khoury into handing all her assets to him…? It’s rather hard to say. The same events are told and retold, they change their significance as Townrow remembers whole new episodes that followed or preceded them. As Townrow wanders around Port Said in a confused state and falls in love with Leah, a married woman, the history happens in the background. Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal which causes a diplomatic and then a military crisis. This in turn causes a crisis for Townrow, who in his overheated head was only sure of one thing, that the British government was essentially good and just. He suspected that he himself was of rather questionable morals but he could sleep at night because he knew that the people who make all the decisions are free of such flaws. He painfully realises that it is only his actions he can be somewhat sure of, and that he is responsible for them, because everyone has ‘something to answer for’. So there starts the most bizarre quest for redemption of a character who can’t even remember if he is British or Irish, that is, whether he is a side in the conflict or a neutral observer. At times Townrow even suspects himself to be American, and occasionally when in her arms, he half wishes to turn out to be the estranged husband of his lover, Leah. P.H.Newby knows how to write romance and sexual tension. I know it seems unlikely when looking at his photos and remembering he was the director of BBC Three, but I am sure he could show a girl a good time. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I just get turned on by superb writing, gentle, underlying humour, a knack for vivid description, an ear for dialogue… Yes, it could be just me. In the end of ‘Something to Answer For’ we don’t quite know whether Townrow was good or bad and whether he redeemed himself or quite the opposite, reached the heights of moral corruption. The novel did a circle and took us to the beginning with Townrow coming to the conclusion that what he thought was his past is actually his future.PH Newby’s main claim to fame might be the fact he was the inaugural Booker Prize winner, something irrelevant back then, but a crown achievement for a writer today. And it’s true I would’ve never got to read ‘Something to Answer For’ if it weren’t for the Booker thing, but now I want to read more Newby’s novels. And I will be kept busy for long as he wrote some twenty-three of them.
Something to Answer For is not a particularly complicated novel in terms of plot: Townrow, the protagonist, goes to Egypt at the request of the wife of a friend, who believes that her late husband was murdered. Mostly set in the Egyptian city of Port Said during the Suez Crisis of 1956, it portrays the adventures of Townrow, as he faces up to not only the conflict occurring around him between Egypt and her former colonial rulers, France and Great Britain, but also the conflict within himself between his innate selfishness and his desire to make amends for the failures of his past.Something is a product of its time, pertinently raising questions concerning the nature of war crimes and colonialism, written at a time when the last vestiges of Britain’s empire were gaining their independence. Newby was a soldier in Egypt during the Second World War and his knowledge and enthusiasm about Egypt seeps through every page; although the protagonist of the novel is an arrogant, disinterested rake, his descriptions of the landscape and people of Egypt evoke a tantalising portrait of a beautiful country that is on the brink of emancipation and conflict.I don’t think that Newby’s work would win the Man Booker Prize if it were nominated for the award today, as the plot is not particularly outstanding; however, it is, as I said previously, a product of its time and I would say that the questions that it raises concerning war and aggression, racism and colonialism are just as pertinent today as they were forty-one years ago. Ultimately it makes the Western reader question whether, as the product of a formerly imperialistic culture, we all have something to answer for.
Do You like book Something To Answer For (2015)?
Britain goes back to Egypt a few years after it had left, gets beaten up, has an identity crisis and drifts off, uncertain of its place in the world.Sorry, sorry. Townrow, the hero, goes back to Egypt etc., etc.When this was written the Suez Crisis would have been fresh enough in everybody’s mind for it work as a metaphor for Britain’s search for its new role in a post-war world. All these years later and, for cultural eedjits like me, it has to stand on its own as a novel. Which it does,quite well actually.Townrow makes a living embezzling funds he is supposed to be protecting. He goes, reluctantly, back to Egypt at the insistence of the widow of a friend he made while stationed there in the army. She is convinced her husband was murdered, and he was connected to enough dodgy dealings for this to be a distinct possibility. Townrow gets there just before the Suez Crisis kicks off, so everybody thinks he is a spy. He gets beaten up, left for dead, and ends up wandering around very dazed and confused. He gradually pulls himself together and starts working things out, just as the British and French invasion starts.Along the way he gets the girl, loses the girl, and so on (no spoilers here) in a very unconvincing love story distraction. And the end is probably clever and meaningful but made no narrative sense to me.Apart from those two quibbles it was a good read. It meandered a bit in the middle but, as it is here Townrow is mentally meandering the most, this works in its own way.It also shows how quickly, given a push in the wrong direction and without a support network, anyone can quickly get lost and turn into a wandering, destitute figure of scorn and pity.
—Joe Clarke
Booker Prize 1969.Read this as part of my quest to read all the Booker Prize winners. Actually I didn't finish it. I really just didn't like it at all. It started out with promise but quickly became tedious. I have finally come to a place in my life where I feel that I can put down a book if I'm not enjoying it. Why waste the time reading something I'm not enjoying? I have slogged through so many crappy books, telling myself there will be some great turnaround and the story will redeem itself somehow, but it never happens.
—Jen
Once I've read a book I like to read a few reviews and see how my thoughts stack up against what the general consensus is. There seems to be an overriding opinion that this book is too confusing and the characters aren't likable enough.On the second point, I think Townrow especially is not very likable, but he sets himself up. He's honest all the time that he's not a very nice person, and in that sense you admire his honesty and his sense of self. Once again in terms of the complexity, it's an intentional plot device. Townrow narrates the book from a third person perspective but is himself confunsed about a lot of the details. It's a little odd at first to have a third-person perspective that isn't really sure whats going on, but you get used to it. And Townrow's misrememberings are a constant source of amusement.
—David
