It’s always a pleasure to encounter a new work from Simon Avery, whose evocative and humane short stories illuminated many issues of Black Static magazine before it folded. His superb novella, The Teardrop Method, is a hauntingly eloquent exploration of the nature of creativity and how it manifests in the work of a musician. The complex and compelling forces at play in the creative process seems to be a recurring theme and it’s one he returns to in his first novel, PoppyHarp, a much less austere and bleak work than the novella, but one still redolent with an air of sadness and lost opportunities.
The story focuses on writer Noah’s attempts to discover the fate of Oliver Frayling, creator of 1970s kids’ TV show The Adventures of Imogen and Florian, who had disappeared some years previous to the novel’s present. Noah reunites with Oliver’s daughter Imogen, a former girlfriend, who was the child star of the show alongside Florian, a somewhat down-at-heel rabbit. As the narrative unfolds through a series of elegantly structured flashbacks, we learn of Oliver’s fleeting success and the profound effect the brush with fame has on his life, particularly on his relationship with his wife and daughter. Oliver’s struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, and his subsequent feelings of guilt are beautifully rendered by Avery, as is the evocation of the British television milieu of the 1970s, calling to mind a host of children’s shows from the era, but in particular works by Oliver Postage and Peter Firmin, including Bagpuss, The Clangers and Pogle’s Wood.
Following the initial success of The Adventures of Imogen and Florian, Oliver, through his relationship with his producer Malcolm Church, is drawn into the orbit of characters loosely based on David Hockney, Kenneth Williams, and perhaps Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Avery gives us convincing and affectionate portraits of these actors and artists, showing not only their foibles and petty jealousies, but also their compassion for and loyalty to each other. This sense of empathy permeates the novel, particularly in the rekindling of the relationship between Noah and Imogen, both now middle-aged, the former separated from his wife, the latter caring for a husband suffering from Alzheimer’s. Their faltering efforts to reconnect with each other mirror Oliver’s tentative and ultimately doomed attempts to reconcile with his family. And always there beneath the narrative surface, is the question of PoppyHarp, ostensibly a failed television play created by Oliver and Malcolm, but at its heart, a work much more suggestive of the magical and restorative power of art.
The breadth of the ideas and themes that Avery touches upon in fewer than 300 pages is nothing short of astonishing: the dark side of fame and celebrity, the mysterious power of the creative urge, the pervasive fear engendered by the Cold War, the dreadful physical and social toll of AIDS, the extent to which Britain has been reshaped by social and political forces to become, as the novel suggests, a more compassionate and tolerant society. PoppyHarp is a sensitive and singular work that more than fulfils the promise of Avery’s shorter fiction.
Mike O’Driscoll is a writer living in Swansea. His work has appeared in Black Static, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies. His story ‘Sounds Like’ was adapted for a TV movie by Brad Anderson, as part of the Masters of Horror series. Mike blogs on different aspects of genre writing and film here.
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