Parties

Gordon yearns for a little power; Richard wishes reality could match the romantic ideal of a perfect pop song; Grainne wants life to be a little more like Tolstoy. Beatrice looks on and tries to chronicle the disappointment of a generation measuring the years to the end of the century in parties. Parties, the début novel by journalist Tom Lappin, is a scathing, insightful and profoundly human commentary on party politics and the corrupting effects of power. But above all it is a satire: a black comedy about young people getting older, and learning to be careful what they wish for, lest they end up finding it.

Praise for Parties:

‘Compelling and absorbing: the story of five friends growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, through the voyage from idealism to disillusion that was left-wing party politics through the turn of the century.’ Paul Torday (author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a Richard & Judy pick)

‘…A fresh, funny, self-confident debut…’ The Herald

‘The lullling allure of a “book at bedtime”, a late-night, heavy-lidded read ... memorably and stylishly well achieved.’ The Scotsman

About Tom Lappin

Tom Lappin grew up in England and now lives in Scotland. He has written about books, music, sport and travel for numerous publications including The Sunday Times, The Scotsman and The Modern Review. Parties is his first novel.

An Interview with Tom Lappin

When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?

I have been writing fiction sporadically for about a decade, but always in short form. Finding the characters, confidence and ideas to sustain a full-length novel was a slow process. Inspiration was internal rather than external, in that once I had taken the characters a certain distance, I wanted to see how they progressed.

Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind Parties? And about what you were trying to achieve; what ideas you were trying to convey?

In part, Parties is an attempt to chronicle a generation (roughly the one that came to adulthood in the 1980s) that has seemed particularly self-indulgent, disappointed and disillusioned. The title came from a sense that these contrived arenas of social interaction, or formalised political structures, were peculiarly joyless affairs. It’s also a British counterpoint to a very American idea of generational angst that can seem portentous and over-serious. From over here, personal misery can be a very fruitful source of comedy.

How do you go about creating your voice on the page?

The most important aspect is finding a character that I can care about, rather than being ambivalent about them. Emotional extremes are preferable. I find it easier if I can loathe them or fall a little bit in love with them, then I have a firm sense of what they would and wouldn’t say or do. Then, of course, you have to make them say or do things that are slightly out of character just to keep things unpredictable.

How and when do you write?

Only in the mornings, in fairly disciplined bursts, concentrating on a single chapter or idea.

What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?

Recently, David Mitchell and David Peace have been the most impressive British novelists, showing a scope and ambition way beyond the norm. I love everything by Haruki Murakami and would probably buy his collected shopping lists if somebody could arrange a translation. Douglas Coupland usually has interesting and seductive ideas, and I enjoy innovative North American writers like Steven Sherrill and Jonathan Lethem. John Darnielle is the perfect poet of modern relationship trauma (hear Game Shows Touch Our Lives). David Sedaris is very funny, and will make you want to go back and read Thurber and Perelman all over again.

An extract from Parties

Here he was, around the table, sipping his Nicaraguan coffee, and not quite managing to suppress the wince that came with the bitterness in every cup, an acrid taste that familiarity could never soften. Anthony Jeffreys, Conservative Students’ representative, laughed out loud, dunking his tea-bag in his cup. At the first meeting of the term, Jeffreys had registered a personal motion recording his determination not to drink the coffee as a gesture of protest against the imposition of Nicaraguan products on the free-market rights of committee members. Gordon occasionally envied him.

A desultory argument was going on between Andy and Karen as to whether Mandela or Biko had made the more decisive contribution to the ‘South African revolution.’ ‘Sure, Biko died and that,’ Andy was saying, ‘but Nelson would have too, if they’d let him. Except the poor bugger’s been locked up on that island for the last twenty-five years.’

‘Best place for him,’ Jeffreys mumbled, and was shouted down.

‘Comrades, I agree with a’ that,’ Aonghais Og-Urghainn said, ‘but do you no think we should look a wee bit closer to home?’ Aonghais really wanted to say ‘hame,’ but they had laughed the last time he had, and he was still a little uneasy in a committee that refused to spell his name the same way twice.

‘Please,’ Gordon said, and he held a pause for a second to savour the way the word had emerged, the way it had sidled into the debate and made a substantial space for itself. ‘It seems to me we already have the Nelson Mandela Union, the Mandela Square, the Steve Biko Peace Garden, and last time I was up Stirling way there was a dirty great monument to William Wallace, although in times of struggle like these I wonder about the wisdom of glorifying divisive nationalists, but?…’

And in the midst of a storm of outage from Aonghais, Gordon continued, ‘but in the spirit of plurality, I believe we should support the motion in favour of the Daniel Ortega swimming pool.’

‘Yeah, right, except Ortega is a macho misogynist who is probably siphoning half the Soviet cash in Managua into his back pocket,’ said Karen, although she seemed to be speaking to herself. Nicotine deprivation had weakened her capacity for righteous argument.

And so it went on. Gordon looked through the union building windows to a grey Edinburgh, to the tower of the arts building, across to the library where he knew Beatrice would be piecing together one of her forensic dissections of Pound or Auden, towards the trees of the Middle Meadow Walk. Gordon remembered that Grainne had told him she had been sitting on the Meadows when she heard the news of her mother’s death. Just for a moment, Gordon felt a pang of love for the second most important part of his life.

Forty-five minutes later, after a fruitful discussion on the dangers of the cult of personality, of the pitfalls of exalting individuals (‘especially when they’re men,’ Karen mumbled) and a ten-minute rhetorical cul-de-sac in which Aonghais tried to make a case for the ‘Margo MacDonald Water-Sports Facility’ until a point of order reminded him they could only discuss short-listed candidates, they came up with a compromise. The Sandinista Swimming Centre it would be, at least until next year’s committee had their chance to change all the nomenclature.

‘Right. Item two,’ Andy said. ‘The establishment of a working group to look into the correct wording for a message of solidarity with the People’s Republic of North Korea.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Jeffreys responded in a delighted aristocratic drawl. Gordon looked over at him and realised that Jeffreys loved all this as much as he did. And he looked round at all of them – at Karen, Aonghais, the pink-faced Liberal whose name he could never remember, at Andy, at Mark McGuire, the tight-lipped Labour Soc convener – and he saw the love in all their eyes, the distinction that brought them here while outside in the Edinburgh rain mere mortals were going to the pub, playing football, heading to classes, frittering time on those ephemeral pursuits outside the oak-panelled corridors of power.

‘Could I have a word, Gordon?’ McGuire said to him in those characteristically neutral tones, after the meeting. Gordon was surprised. He thought McGuire despised him, thought him a dilettante. McGuire’s Labour crew were a dour bunch, oppressed by electoral misery, carrying around a collective futility like zombies enslaved by the voodoo of Margaret Thatcher. ‘Let’s get a coffee,’ McGuire said, and followed up the invitation with a significant look. For a fleeting moment, Gordon wondered if he was being recruited for MI5 or the KGB.

As it turned out, he was being recruited for the Labour Party. ‘You’re the type we need, Gordon,’ McGuire said with a singular lack of enthusiasm. ‘We’re gradually weeding out all the Trots and the Militants and the tankies and the crazies with beards, but the trouble is, that means half the membership is going down the river. We have to replace them with somebody.’

‘And you think I’m the sort of amenable fodder you can persuade to toe the line,’ Gordon said.

‘It’s not like that. It’s just we need less … well … windbags. And more pragmatists. Neil is going to reshape the party into a more modern image. We have to start embracing post-industrial realities?…’

McGuire continued in this vein for a while, Gordon still smiling at that casual use of the word ‘Neil.’ He stopped listening, though. Politics for him wasn’t about this dreary sort of reasonableness; it was about fiendish Machiavellian plots, about the manipulation of others, the deployment of principles merely as a tactical gambit rather than as a driving force. It was about fun, and the thrill of power, however slight. They were talking to the wrong man. He heard McGuire tailing off with a ‘…? So how about it? You interested?’

‘I don’t think so, Mark. No offence, but you look like a bunch of losers to me. And at the moment there just doesn’t seem to be much point in the Labour Party. Christ, it’s not even as if you’ve got any good-looking women.’

McGuire offered a small snort, and shrugged. He finished his coffee with a grimace and stood up.

‘It’s a party, Gordon. In the end, everyone needs a party.’