I seem to be experiencing the literary counterpart of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: reading books dealing with young, mentally unhinged protagonists with dysfunctional parents. The latest in line is the Luke Bitmead Writers Bursary award winner, The Wacky Man, by Lyn G. Farrell, which is a harrowing account of how domestic abuse can irrevocably mar someone’s psyche for life. Traumatic experiences in childhood are etched out in memory long after all the tangible traces of the atrocities committed have disappeared. The Rorschach-inspired cover gives us an inkling of the subconscious manifestations of the deep-seated fear induced by her father that will haunt Amanda in the story to follow.

Amanda’s story is relayed in a dual narrative; the first person account is divided into eight chapters with apt titles like ‘Giving up the Ghost’, ‘The Aftermath’ and ‘Disintegration’. In these, Amanda looks back at how she became the deranged, misanthropic person that she is now. The third-person narration which is in a dramatic present tense highlights the events that transpired to bring about Amanda’s downward spiral.

When we meet the traumatised Amanda at the beginning, a year has gone by since she isolated herself in her room and she shows severe signs of manic depression and trichotillomania. Her father’s terror has embedded itself deep in the recesses of her pliant mind and she is unable to break free. Her father Seamus, the perpetrator of abuse, is long gone, but years of living in the shadow of his fear have taken its toll on Amanda and her mother.

A promising debut novel, providing incisive psychological insight on abuse

Seamus, who belonged to a big, brawling Irish family, relocates to London where he can never quite adjust, after marrying the very stereotypically English Barbara. Out in the world, he is the epitome of Irish charm, amiable and even-tempered, even when racial slurs are hurled his way due to his Irish lineage. However, his veneer of jovial disposition hides the simmering rage this evokes in him which adds to his crippling inferiority complex. As is almost always the case, he takes this anger out on his family by abusing them, mentally and physically. He is jealous of his children for being more educated than him and blames his wife for being the reason behind the prejudice he has to face.

Farrell pulls no punches in portraying the terrifying reality of a dysfunctional childhood through the eyes of a 14-year-old. The protagonist breaks the fourth wall, with the first-person narrative style similar to the teenage vernacular of Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye. This gives the prose psychological depth and plunges the reader into the world of Amanda May without any preamble. Amanda would rather believe that her dad is a monster than see him treat her classmates better than her. The substantive insight into the peculiar mindset of a teenager makes her character come to life.

The book shows us the myriad ways in which individuals deal with abuse. Amanda and her brothers are petrified of Seamus’s anger, having had to conform to the ebb and flow of his temper all their childhoods. “We moved around him like crabs, sideways on so we could always see him. We spoke like ghosts might speak, in whispers and murmurs, so that the noise didn’t carry. But still he swelled and swelled with anger”. The children make do with their situation by employing passive-aggressive tactics like contriving to snap his bootlaces, shred his clothes and causing other such minor inconveniences. They have a habit of referring to the truant officer as the eponymous Wacky Man, and then give the title to their dad who loves to whack them — an ironic jab at their situation.

“‘Hi-ya, dad’, we’d say when the back door went. If he said hello back, that was a good sign; it meant jokes and pudding after tea and Mum looking happy for a change. If he only grunted as he came in, that was kind of okay, but it was getting borderline, so we knew that maybe today was okay but tomorrow could be dangerous. And if he said nothing, that was a bad sign. Then our own balloons, anxiety balloons, would start inflating.” — Excerpt from the book

Barbara, reticent as she is, has anaesthetised herself to her troubles by becoming dependent on pills. They allow her to touch base with the grim reality of her household just long enough for it to be tolerable; the rest of the time she spends in a hazy black hole. After Seamus leaves, instead of getting her act together, she seems to buckle under the strain of spending so many years in the shadow of a bully. She begins to have bouts of chronic depression and blames Amanda for adding to her troubles by being “difficult”.

Things take another turn when the boys run away after one of them endures a particularly savage beating. Seamus takes this as a personal affront and Amanda and her mother have to bear the brunt of his wrath. Life gets harder for them with multiple visits by social workers followed by his failed attempts at reformation. Seamus’s abrupt departure to Ireland leaves them stunned, and rather than starting out afresh, they are left to deal with the reverberating past. And this — Seamus’s inexplicable exit — is the only loose thread in this otherwise shrewd debut novel.

Amanda’s neuroses run the gamut from anxiety attacks to manic fits. She seems to have imbibed her father’s derogation of herself, as her sense of self-loathing is intense and all-consuming. Farrell skilfully manages to keep the prose stark without making it gratuitous or resorting to egocentric self-pity.

The language is coarse and colloquial as the writer is content to let the first-person narrative sound genuinely like that of an adolescent. This novel is different from others on similar subjects as it offers no optimistic platitudes. Despite her sufferings, there is never any redemption for Amanda. The Wacky Man gives us unflinching understanding of what perpetuates abuse and the vicious cycle of mental instability that it sets off.

The reviewer is a Karachi-based freelance writer and critic.

The Wacky Man
(NOVEL)
By Lyn G. Farrell
Legend Press Ltd, UK
ISBN: 978-1785079559
288pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 14th, 2016