I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for literary losers, underdogs and everymen – from Tom Sharpe’s Wilt to David Nobbe’s Reggie Perrin, from Nigel Williams’ Henry Farr (aka The Wimbledon Poisoner), to Adrian Mole, I have always enjoyed a good tale of a downtrodden and woebegone man. While the above named are quintessentially English characters, Mark Sarvas‘s Californian radiologist Harry Rent, the star of Harry, Revised, nevertheless seems worthy and well qualified to take his place amongst the ranks of these other great creations. In his debut novel, Mark Sarvas has managed to pull off the trick of writing a book that is funny without being glib, packs a surprisingly powerful emotional punch, and avoids a cliched happily-every-after ending but still leaves us with some hope for its characters’ future.

Harry Rent is at a turning point – on the morning of his wife’s funeral, when he should be in mourning, he’s in Cafe Retro, trying to work out how to get the waitress Molly to notice him. His ability to communicate with her does not match up to his highflying ideas – he can’t just say what he feels, or be honest about his personal circumstances – and this drives him to increasingly ambitious schemes to impress Molly and get rid of her waster boyfriend. The principle medium for this attempt at seduction is Molly’s colleague Lucille, and there are shades of Pygmalion in Harry’s sometimes ham-fisted and patronising attempts to improve her lot. Harry’s Walter Mittyesque inner life revolves increasingly around a comparision between himself and Edmond Dantes, the wronged hero of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo, who takes a meticulously planned revenge on his tormentors. Asking himself “what would Dantes do?”, Harry attempts to take control of his life, but his assertiveness and invention do not always pay dividends.

Over the course of the novel, we discover the circumstances leading to the death of Harry’s wife Anna, tracking back to the genesis of their relationship and the contributions they both made to the progressive deterioration of their marriage. The book addresses first Harry’s weaknesses and failings, his perpetual doubts and sense of inadequacy, and at first it appears that he is right to feel guilty about his role in the breakdown of his marriage and Anna’s tragic demise. However, later on we discover the strain placed on the union from the beginning by the spectre of Anna’s parents, the extent to which they messed up their daughters and compromised the foundations of the marriage from the beginning, to the point that Anna felt ashamed of Harry and lied about his qualifications. Ultimately, neither Anna nor Harry emerge with a great deal of credit from the tale.

Sarvas’ use of third-person, present-tense writing lends Harry’s story a freshness and immediacy that keeps the pages turning as he tries to revise his life to include Molly. Along the way he manages the accidential redemption of a complete stranger and the confrontation of his own failings, not necessarily through the technique of asking himself what Edmond Dantes would do. By the conclusion, Harry has indeed been revised, not just through his own efforts but through the attentions of those around him, from a dreamer to someone who realises the value of honesty above all else. Beautifully written, funny and also moving, with a bleakly realistic view of how people who claim to love each other can manage to damage each other so badly, Harry, Revised is a great first novel, and I highly recommend it.

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