Ironopolis
by Glen James Brown
I’ve read some very good books lately, but few that I have enjoyed and admired as much as Ironopolis. This novel by Glen James Brown is set in the Burn Council Estate, a fictional housing estate in Middlesborough (hence the title, an old nickname for the Yorkshire town). The estate was built in the heyday of operation of the local steelworks but is now facing and undergoing the demolition and “regeneration” typical of the post-industrial era.
The novel is made up of six interlinked stories, each with its own narrator and approach. Thus, the opening segment, set in 1991, is in epistolary style, as a middle-aged woman succumbing to cancer writes to an art dealer about her years of friendship with the now-famous cult painter Una Cruikshank. The penultimate chapter consists of transcripts of interviews (complete with footnotes) conducted by the woman’s son Alan who, almost three decades later, is investigating an episode of recent local history (the explosion of a wartime ordnance on New Year’s Eve) only to end up discovering long-buried secrets about his family. Other chapters adopt a more conventional style, and focus on other characters who live on the estate, such as Jim Clarke, a bisexual man who comes into his own in the acid music scene, or his sister, local hairdresser and gambling addict Corina Clarke.
The way in which Brown links the various narrative and plot threads is hugely impressive. At the beginning, the reader feels thrown in at the deep end. It takes some concentration to get to grips with the context. But the longer one reads, the more pieces fall into place, and new connections become evident. Some characters haunt all the chapters, despite not having an own voice. A case in point is painter Una Cruikshank, whose Gothic paintings of ghostly riverbanks are referenced in all the segments even though what we learn about her is “second hand”. The same goes for Vincent Barr, the local “strongman”, who features repeatedly as an object of terror, but eventually turns out to have his own fragilities. Perhaps the most (perplexingly? unexpectedly?) effective touch is the introduction of the mythical figure of Peg Powler, a female creature, at once horrid and seductive, said to inhabit the River Tees. Peg Powler makes an appearance in all the segments of the novel, lending a supernatural aura and an element of psychogeography to what is an otherwise ultra-realist working-class novel.
Glen James Brown’s narrative prowess would have been enough to make Ironopolis a great novel. But there’s more to it than post-modern bravura. For instance, Brown evokes a strong sense of place – the Burn Council Estate is so vividly described that one would be forgiven for thinking that it is a real rather than fictional setting. He also creates some memorable characters – I’m thinking particularly of Alan Barr, who comes into his own in the final parts of the book, or the tragic figure of Jim Clarke, still getting high to The Acid Life by Farley “Jackmaster” Funk for the sake of old times.
Ironopolis also has a political subtext (its shortlisting for the Orwell Prize is unsurprising as much as it is deserved). The novel's description of working-class life is bleak but not unremittingly so, finding warmth, humanity and a vein of black humour even in the direst of circumstances. This ambivalence is evident in the conflict feelings of the residents about the regeneration of the housing estate. Some see it as an opportunity to escape, others as the loss of a shared lifestyle going back generations.
This is a brilliant debut novel, but one which would have been no less impressive at the peak of a writer’s career.
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