Straight White Male

June 23, 2014
As this boisterous novel from Scottish author Niven (Kill Your Friends) begins, once-promising Irish novelist Kennedy Marr is leading a life of excess in Hollywood, where he squanders his talent working on screenplays because they pay better than novels. Kennedy, burdened by overextended writing commitments and a $1.4 million tax debt, finds escape in the form of a literary grant offered by Deeping University in Warwickshire. But there’s a catch: Kennedy must also lecture at the school, near the home of his ex-wife, Millie, and 16-year-old daughter, Robin. Kennedy tries to make a go at his new job and begins an affair with one of his students. But just when he thinks he’s escaped Hollywood, a movie shoot at Pinewood Studios drags him back. And then there’s the matter of his mother dying in an Irish hospital. With such a full plate, will Kennedy be able to see his way clear to a new life? Niven simultaneously satirizes Hollywood and academia and scores solid points against both. Although the story is rather predictable and Kennedy’s last-ditch epiphany feels forced, readers looking for a ferociously funny read will enjoy his company. Agent: Clare Conville, Conville and Walsh (U.K.).

Starred review from September 15, 2014
A very funny novel that gets darker and goes deeper as it progresses. Farce teeters toward tragedy in this novel about an Irish author who long ago enjoyed a critical and popular breakthrough with an international best-seller. He has since sold his services to the highest Hollywood bidder while indulging his voracious appetites without moral compunction. Then he finds himself at the juncture of unlikely coincidence-just as he learns that he is in serious American tax trouble, he receives an extraordinarily generous teaching fellowship in Britain, which he initially resists at least partly because the faculty also includes one of his ex-wives. Protagonist Kennedy Marr is a familiar character, a literary scoundrel who retains his charm; even he acknowledges, in a serious turn, that "he was the most awful, dread cliche: the middle-aged novelist trying to come to terms with his own mortality." Where it initially seems that Niven (The Second Coming, 2012, etc.) might not have much to offer beyond some hearty laughter (there's an episode about multitasking with pornography, and ruining another laptop in the process, that is particularly slapstick), the novel turns into an argument about just what a novel-and a life-should be. "The purpose of art is to delight. Not to enlighten. Not to teach," Kennedy insists, before he develops into a character who proves teachable, if not enlightened. He recognizes that he hasn't been much of a father to his teenage daughter or son to his dying mother, that at least one of his marriages might have enriched his life if he'd taken it more seriously, and that he has squandered most of life on "another set of sensations to throw in the face of the abyss." His escapades with an actress, a student and whoever else is handy lead unexpectedly to a climax that is deliriously ambitious and richly satisfying. Literary satire finds redemption as a character ruled by his genitals discovers he has a heart.

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Starred review from September 15, 2014

This playful novel examines the plight of Irish expatriate writer and screenwriter Kennedy Marra. Beset by financial woes, Kennedy becomes the unwitting recipient of Deeping University's very prestigious Bingham Award, as well as a large sum of money. The only catch is that he has to spend nine months in England teaching a creative writing class, never mind that he is dissolute to the extreme, prone to carnal excess in all areas, and has an estranged daughter and two ex-wives, one of whom is a faculty member at Deeping. Needless to say, Kennedy accepts the award, as one of the screenplays he wrote is conveniently being filmed in England. Various rollicking scandals and adventures ensue. Things look dire for our protagonist when it seems that indiscriminate fornication, the one thing that distracts him from looming mortality, will be denied him. Fate intervenes, however, and at the last second Kennedy's life is redeemed. VERDICT Niven's (Kill Your Friends) novel, in a vivid reverse ontological way, itself represents the product of Kennedy's redemption as a writer and a human being; highly recommended for readers who appreciate the conundrum that is life.--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA

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