Review - 'Mad World' by Paula Byrne

There was a time, in particular before World War One (AKA 'the Big Show'), when the aristocratic class ran the country. They went to the best schools, went to university and then proceeded smoothly to some position in Government until they arranged for their father to be killed in a hunting accident and took their seat in the House of Lords, looking forward to a succession of good dinners and putting a serious dent in the global supply of claret. Of course the War changed all that as the upper class were exposed as not fit to lead a conga line, never mind a charge at the enemy.

Reading 'Mad World', one is left with the profound impression that it's a wonder the aristocracy managed to stop buggering one another long enough to do anything at all. There's so much sodomy going on that it's a rare page that doesn't see somebody plunging into a chum with indecent haste before getting hammered and making a spectacularly bad marriage to a wife who turns increasingly ill tempered as she discovers that she is second in her husband's affection to the entire male staff of the household, including the grooms and the compost lad.

With all the men drinking and buggering the help, it's little wonder that the women get a little bitter and come over as somewhat brittle. At least that's the impression that one gets from the author. One also gets the distinct feeling that the author doesn't like any of the people she is writing about. This makes for an uncomfortable read, quite appropriate for a book largely about buggery.

There's not a lot to like in the characters described here. Fun in literature, in real life somebody who is bent on self destruction can be quite dull. What it did do very well was draw a very clear line between being a drunk and being an alcoholic. Drunks drink every day, cope with mammoth hangovers and manage to function in whatever pocket of society they find themselves in. Alcoholics drink to oblivion, which is where they end up, with skin like the sort of paper you unearth on an archaeological dig. However, both drunks and alcoholics make for dull company - the only people who find the company of drunks amusing are other drunks; it's difficult to deliver a witty bon mot when you're slurring your words, your sense of timing is all over the place and you're holding a kebab in one hand and a pint of stella in the other. These are not conditions to bandy witty conversation, these are conditions to drink two pints of water and take yourself off to bed and for Christ's sake don't make a pissed-up call to the ex. Reading about people getting drunk is less tedious because there was always the possibility, the book being set in the country, that there would be an amusing accident when some hooray tried to shag a steam powered threshing machine but that never happened and the only effect was that I ended up rather fancying a cocktail at eight in the morning as I read this on the train to work.

There is, at the heart of the book, a tragedy that is profound, and profoundly well described. It's the idea, the very idea, of unfulfilled promise. It is quite apparent that if one goes to Eton, those are the best days of your life. Everything else is a failure to fulfil your early promise. When you go to college you don't dazzle as well as you did at school, and then your career isn't the success that was expected when you were at college. Basically, unless you go straight from school to be the first man on Mars, you're a disappointment.

This is either a tragedy or, as I suspect, adult life.

It's also profoundly sad. Who is anyone to say that another has not fulfilled their promise until the lid is firmly screwed down on the box - and even then? What if they had kept that year they spent discovering a lost civilization in Iceland a secret? As for early promise - I'd say that anyone who stopped being ritually sodomised when they left school had actually made something of an improvement on their life - unless they like that sort of thing.

So the best days of your life are essentially being buggered by bigger boys until it's your turn to bugger boys. Ideal preparation for a career in government.

The aristocracy are portrayed as wild and brittle. Everyone's drunk, everyone's screwing one another, or others, everyone's either rich or festering in poverty and there is a constant merry go round of aristocracy staying with one another. This allows the bed-hopping, buggery and boozing that marked the era. Luckily everyone looks really well dressed and has sensible hair, and the veneer of respectability and glamour lends the whole of the proceedings a sort of louche charm.

Madersfield Court is described well. I've actually been there and loved the house and gardens - any house that comes with its own moat sends a certain message, which is usually: 'stay that side of the water while I reload my blunderbuss'. The gardens are stunning and contain a pet cemetery. This is what we expect from the aristocracy - beat the servants but honour your Labrador.

It's a fascinating insight into the life, as was lived then, of the aristocracy. And you kind of get the feeling that apart from trading up from opium to coke, the lives of the rich are pretty much the same now, except with less moats. At the same time, one could see the same drama of family disgrace, heavy drinking, infidelity and bad behaviour as being played out on any sink estate in the country. If you drinking your breakfast of car-boot vodka from a bottle, it's squalid, if you get your butler to decant your breakfast Champaign into jugs, it's glamorous.

This book then, is something of a paradox. I found it interesting and certainly ended up thanking my lucky stars that I didn't go to public school and hence can still walk without waddling. But there was an undercurrent not quite of disapproval but almost of disapproving envy, and a lack of empathy from the author, so while the book was interesting, it wasn't enjoyable and it's not a book I would recommend to others - though I would like to discuss it with others that read it - because I'm not sure that buggery and alcohol is everybody's cup of tea.