Books I've read: 2000ft Above Worry Level

 

I picked this one up at the library the other day because it was on a display of local authors and I recognised the author's name as being someone who used to work for me at a cinema many, many moons ago.

And as soon as I read the first page I recognised the guy who came in to his job interview shaking and sweating and barely able to stutter out his name.  You wouldn't have thought that would have given me a great first impression, but I saw something in Eamonn that I don't think he could see in himself at the time and I wanted to encourage that.  So I hired him.

Since then, he's gone on to be a comedian and now an author.

Structured as a novel of sorts, the book is more a series of loosely related vignettes or short stories, some taking place in the present, and some harking back to the protagonist's childhood - one of my favourite chapters was about a childhood camping trip to a town dealing with a plague of wasps.

The main character is depressed, a little lost in the world, perpetually broke and probably a real worry to his long-suffering flatmates.  Some of the stories about what he's going through are incredibly tragic, yet also incredibly funny.  I guess those situations that you find embarassing at the time can be hilarious in retrospect, even if they are still tinged with a hint of shame.

I think what makes the protagonist here so endearing is that he is genuinely trying to be a better human.  He's just not great at it, and he manages to somehow undermine every step he takes in the right direction.  Some of this is circumstance, some of it is poor mental health and some of it is just the stupid stuff we do as we grow up, the stuff we (hopefully) learn from.

I'd definitely recommend this one.  It's tragic and funny and will make you squirm in places, but it's also undeniably human.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Everything is sad and funny and nothing is anything else

2000ft Above Worry Level begins on the sad part of the internet and ends at the top of a cliff face. This episodic novel is piloted by a young, anhedonic, gentle, slightly disassociated man. He has no money. He has a supportive but disintegrating family. He is trying hard to be better. He is painting a never-ending fence.

Eamonn Marra’s debut novel occupies the precarious spaces in which many twenty-somethings find themselves, forced as they are to live in the present moment as late capitalism presses in from all sides. Mortifying subjects – loserdom, depression, unemployment, cam sex – are surveyed with dignity and stoicism. Beneath Marra’s precise, unemotive language and his character’s steadfast grip on the surface of things, something is stirring.