It’s an interesting time for new authors to be attempting to grapple with what it means to be a young man in the early 21st century. Previous generations of pontificators on the subject of masculinity have either spent their words wrestling with broken dreams and futile aggression – see Chuck Palahniuk. Or indulging in hyperactive, buck chasing narcissism like Brett Easton Ellis, and it’d be nice to see something more refined and progressive try and capture this period of life. Young Brit Ian Hollingshead’s second novel occupies that age bracket and succeeds in being much tamer and more cordial than anything those guys have ever written. But he has decided in Beta Male to address how it feels to be a man in his twenties and has, in his own clumsy way, written something with undertones and subtext that are just as, if not more, troubling than anything Ellis or Palahniuk have ever penned.

The book is the tawdry tale of four twentysomething blokes. There’s Sam, the womaniser and winnable actor, Alan the boring monogamist who, in typically clichéd fashion, is an accountant. Ed, the unhinged teacher and Matt, the unemployed doctor. Through the course of the novel’s fairly slim spine, they lust after a series of girls, occasionally falling in love, but mostly pottering around in their undergarments indulging in testicle driven monologues on how woman are suffocating men. The four are bound together by a sub US teen movie bet and hackneyed portrayal of male friendship, the lads embark on a series of loosely linked shenanigans, flirting with heartbreak and a flaky kind of danger, but without ever conveying any real sense of tension.

Ian Hollingshead desperately wants to be Nick Hornby, finding humour and profundity in the banal of contemporary definitions of masculinity, but he’s nowhere near that league. Hornby has a gift for giving honest portrayals of rounded characters, with gaping flaws and endearing traits in equal measure, trusting his readers to make their own judgment about them. Hollingshead isn’t prepared to allow his readers that much scope, he’s quite clearly in love with his creations and wants everyone who picks up the book to be rooting for his boys every trudge of the way. This leaves most of the novel to read like a lobotomised How I Met Your Mother script. Hollingshead isn’t brave enough to let his characters really suffer for their actions, or indeed, to make them truly dislikeable. Even Sam, his loathsome lothario, is treated like someone worthy of sympathy and isn’t given anything like his just deserts, with Hollingshead constantly swooping in with ever more implausible get outs. The rest of the characters lead equally charmed lives too, but it’s not the predictability of the plot where the book shows its unpleasant nature. That comes in the returning pseudo banter between the four men, which, at the heart of it, seems to come from a place of resentment toward women. Female characters are either fat, gullible or devious beyond belief and none are ever presented in anything other than questionable lights. Torturing the men folk with their treacherous games and quests for a serious relationship.

Ultimately Hollingshead falls victim to what is perhaps the biggest cliché of machismo there is. That of offering no tangible sense of vulnerability in his characters. There’s no sense of fear or worry in any of his characters, and you never once feel that things are going to work out less than swimmingly for them. You don’t feel for the boys, you don’t want them to succeed or fail, ultimately end up not really caring. Hollingshead may be writing about an interesting period of life, but he’s missed his opportunity here and instead produced something that reads more Nuts magazine than anything else. All a bit nasty really.

Reviewed by Tom Goodwyn

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