Chapman's Odyssey, by twice Booker-shortlisted Paul Bailey, brings the reader inexorably into the life of Harry Chapman, heavily medicated in a hospital ward. His ramblings are sometimes lucid, occasionally off the wall and always entertaining. Harry can quote poetry endlessly, to the delight of his attending doctors, nurses and other helpers. He started his adult life as an actor and retains that theatrical flair, despite a crippling pain in his belly that makes him cry out for release. The good doctor administers an analgesic and the rambles begin.
A lifelong reader, despite humble beginnings in an anti-intellectual atmosphere, Harry wrote several successful books after leaving the stage. Many of his best friends are characters from novels he has enjoyed. In his current miasma of drugs, they visit him and settle in for a talk. One of his frequent callers is Pip, of Great Expectations; Harry identifies with Pip's poor boy–makes-good scenario. Another visitor is Babar, that well-dressed elegant elephant who lost his mother to a vicious hunter.
Ah, yes, the mother. There are issues. Harry's is a harridan who has been dead for 22 years and now visits him daily, spewing her venom around the room:
-I'm seventy, Mum.
-Seventy? Seven, seventeen or seventy, you're still the same useless object I brought into the world.
-It's good to have your support.
Her name is Alice, called Malice by her sister, Rose. Rose is nicknamed Rosy Glow by Alice because she is always pleasant. Another drop-in is Harry's father, Frank, killed in the war. Time is turned upside down as Harry meets his father before he marries Alice or fathers Harry. This disruption doesn't bother Harry; he floats from injection to injection receiving his ghostly guests like a good host.
What this all adds up to is a fascinating story of a man who has lived a full life both of the body and the mind. Harry was never averse to a little rough trade, but also gloried in fine music, good food and wine and the best in literature. He gets off a good one in discussing Virginia Woolf: "the author who had bleached the English novel of all the vibrant colours her predecessors had imbued it with." The rapier wit and wisdom of Harry Chapman amuse and amaze by turns. --Valerie Ryan
Shelf Talker: Harry Chapman, hospital-bound and drugged, reviews his life and times, friends and foes, with probity and wit.