Way to Go - Softcover

Alan Spence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753807327 ISBN 13: 9780753807323

Publisher: PHOENIX HOUSE (WEID), 1999

Synopsis

Death is everywhere in this odd novel, a coming-of-age story that dissolves into notes from a funeral business. First US publication for the Scottish Spence.

Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.

The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.

The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Picking up where Evelyn Waugh left off in The Loved One, Spence turns a touching '60s coming-of-age story about a Scottish undertaker's son into a sharp, funny and ultimately gut-wrenching commentary on the ceremonies that surround death and dying. Neil McGraw is the son of a widowed, staid Scottish funeral director who bridles at the prospect of inheriting his father's business. After a cheeky scene in which he brings home a date who seduces him by hopping into one of his dad's coffins, he takes off and becomes a hippie, making stops in San Francisco, Mexico City, Bali and India along the way. His focus shifts when he falls in love with a woman named Lila, who quickly becomes his wife, but then his father dies and Neil is forced to come home and make the funeral arrangements. When a widowed family friend approaches Neil to help him bury her late husband, McGraw reluctantly becomes an undertaker. Turning duty into fun, McGraw, his wife and an artist friend begin a free-spirited approach to funerals that includes custom-painted coffins and themed ceremonies involving Harleys and Star Trek costumes. Such lighter moments are offset by a particularly compassionate ceremony for an AIDS victim and a macabre scene in which McGraw embalms his own father. In an agonizing final twist, the undertaker must face his own mortality after a cancer diagnosis. Spence manages the sudden tone shifts with amazing dexterity, and his light touch keeps the humor from spilling over into silliness and self-parody. The comedy and a strong central character makes this novel surprisingly bright and engaging, but it's the thoughtful compassion beneath the surface that makes it memorable.
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Edition details

• Publisher: PHOENIX HOUSE (WEID)
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0753807327
• ISBN 13: 9780753807323
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294