Michael Bracewell – art critic and biographer of Roxy’s music – published his earlier novel, Perfect tension22 years ago. Unfinished business It is, his publisher says, his “return to form”. It’s not that he’s regressed because his writing in other literary venues has been more and more compelling since the last two decades. Memorial gift (2021), for its nonfiction setting in London in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its music, art, fashion and very cheap rents. as a Memorial gift, Unfinished business Time is concerned and the way London and its people have changed over the past half century.
Perfect tension It tells the story of an anonymous office worker who breaks his boring routine on a hectic day. When it starts, Unfinished business We feel the same way when we’re introduced to Martin Knight, a fifty-something whose black suit and “uncut tie” make him an expert on life in office work. Martin feels “friendless” and “invisible” in a world that has no interest in him, as he commutes to work in the city through East London.
In this description, Martin seems like a Dr. Everyman, but he’s actually an “esthete” with fond memories of his youth in the 1970s and 1980s and a love of big roofs and fine wine. Martin is not self-aware, and at lunch with his old friend Hannah, he says, “My speech consists only of reminiscences. Every fifty steps I stop to look for something lost. Some shitty bars I once saw The Damned in. Something like that.
“When you talk about punk, you sound like your mom talking about the war,” points out Hannah. Bracewell’s short story captures the simplest of truths: everyone gets old, and it’s often surprising.
Martin moves. He grew up in Surrey but his ex-wife Marilyn is a member of the “wealthy metropolitan cultural aristocracy”, the daughter of a famous Marxist film-maker from Primrose Hill. Chloe lives in a heritage house in Putney and works two days a week. But for all those privileged with Bracewell’s characters, Unfinished business It is humane, intimate and touching because it celebrates universal themes – aging, marriage, friendship, mortality – and beauty.
Bracewell enjoys describing furniture, architecture, art, and especially clothing. He vividly painted each character’s clothing: “A heavy black Italian dress that came below the knee, made of tightly woven wool.” Overpriced black velor and aubergine stockings over tons of fishnet and obviously wild heels. Elsewhere, he, like a street photographer, captures a waitress’s “dyed blond hair pulled back from her face in a wide black rubber band, hanging to one side in a shockingly scary wig style.”
Although they may seem simple, these details are accumulated not only by the characters’ views on the world, but also by the times in which we live. Memorial gift, Bracewell is coming from a similar position to the poet Philip Larkin, who says that “at the bottom of all art is the impulse to protect.” Larkin wouldn’t have enjoyed Bracewell’s unruly metropolitanism, but it’s a pleasure to read a novel that appreciates that, for all its flaws, the capital still matters at a moment when Brexit and Covid have robbed London of some of its criminality. Cultural energy, style and human potential.
Despite the sad denouement, the book’s emotional impact is already packed with inspiration for the way the years can pick apart even the strongest relationships. The ending is redemptive and opens up the possibility of meeting Martin again. Either way, I hope we don’t have to wait another 20 years for Bracewell’s next novel.
Unfinished business by Michael Bracewell White Rabbit £16.99, 192 pages
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