Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings by P Robert Smith
| Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings by P Robert Smith | |
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| Category: General Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Donna Wells
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| Summary: One wacky, weird book that'll certainly get you questioning your sanity. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 224 | Date: February 2010 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| ISBN: 978-0099535232 | |
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Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings is the sort of book you finish with the feeling that you've just read something with a million different meanings. Don't be surprised if you feel like you should start the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engaged, and perhaps that's the whole point.
To say this book is unconventional is an understatement. It is the literary version of a Coen brothers film crossed with Catcher in the Rye. It's full of dry wit, glaring irony, and exaggerated language, and packed with eclectic characters, emblematic of a world gone to hell. You are bounced from one page to the next with no time for niceties. The plot is unleashed with the main character – Fielding Montanna's – death and that's where the madness kicks in as there's more concern for the dented car than an individual life.
Following this there are deaths, or should I say happy endings, all over the place. Most memorably, a singing Viking explodes, an old guy falls out of a tree and an old pram lady is squished by a sea monster - all in sharp contrast to Montanna, who simply steps out in front of a car. If you try to make sense of all the events in the narrative you'll probably go crazy – I know I did. It's better to just enjoy it for what it is, almost like a dream, where anything can and will happen, while being intersected with cutting remarks from the author on what society has created.
The city becomes a character in its own right - an engulfing sludge rising higher and higher all the time, threatening to sink us all. It's supported by other characters, like Moriarty a badly run down human machine who hasn't slept in twenty three years, and Louie Louie, Montanna's best friend who can't seem to stop eating.
So with all this darkness and weirdness, where it the hope? Where is the happy ending we've been promised? Well it's in the form of the heavenly Sunday Daffodil, the love interest for Montanna, who he saves from an ugly prehistoric looking black bird. Even though they are both broken physically (Sunday's cracked her neck, Montanna's broken his leg,) and emotionally (Sunday's been trying to kill herself and Montanna's dead but doesn't know it,) they form their happy ending. Giving hope that although we're all broken in some way, we too could get our happy ending. To the chime of church bells, they descend into a perfectly dug hole for two with a gathering of the surviving characters stood around. So, it finishes with a funeral that feels very much like a wedding - unconventional to the end.
For me Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings is just that step too far into the realms of strangeness to be enjoyable. I loved the pace and I imagine that it'll be revered by critics for its depth but I couldn't relate to the characters and I was looking for the clincher that explained it all. Smith points out that; Just when you thought you could maybe see the big picture… you realised there was no big picture. It didn't exist. There was just a million billion tiny insignificant pieces of other pieces puzzles. He could well be referring to his own writing that there is no big picture, no big secret but I still became frustrated looking for one.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.
If this appeals to you then why not try One Red Paperclip: How a Small Piece of Stationery Turned into a Great Big Adventure by Kyle MacDonald?
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You can read more book reviews or buy Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings by P Robert Smith at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings by P Robert Smith at Amazon.com.
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