re:mote voices: literature

Title: Peace & Love With Melody Paradise
Author: Martin Millar
Publisher: IMP

Millar's sixth original novel is told from his own perspective as a reluctant participant in an illegal festival organised by a group of travellers that he knows. The festival is arranged by Melody Paradise leader of The Last Free Moonbeam Tribe, which is one of twelve tribes, where she has a brother or sister in each of the other eleven. Renowned for her ability to spread peace and love, she has decided that the way to resolve the feuds between all the tribes is to arrange a festival where they can all get together and have fun.

With legislation in Britain in recent years preventing the occurrence of "illegal" events and generally hampering the life styles of travellers and other "criminals", holding a festival as planned is unlikely to be straightforward. To prevent undesirable clashes with authorities which would ruin the festival, Melody has cunningly come up with the idea of putting on an alternative circus for the summer fair of a small village. Once all the tribes arrive in the week leading up to the circus, she can claim that they are all the advance crew for setting the circus and have their festival undisturbed. To go with this Melody persuades the author, Martin, to write a proposal for the council and to put on "creative writing classes" with the aim of changing people's opinion on travellers. However once the festival is started nothing goes to plan - despite Melody's best efforts inter-tribal disputes escalate. By the end everything that can go wrong has. No, you don't understand, I mean everything....and then some!

The story is told by Millar covering the month before the event, as his reluctance and despair tells him that he does not want to be involved in this, while Melody persuades him that everything will be fine. This mixes in with a day-by-day account of the festival and incidences of significance. As Millar points out in the course of the narrative, he likes romantic comedy and with the novel's development it becomes clear that is really what this is. A romantic story which is made funny by Millar's depiction of why life is not perfect. It seems that to make a romantic comedy one has to add a dose of tragedy - then how the author deals with the consequences determines whether it becomes the comedy which is desired or an outright tragedy. Despite a rather substantial dose of tragedy, Millar's style is such that I find myself grinning as I read, with the occasional hearty chuckle (normally associated with disbelief at Millar's straight-faced audacity).

It seems likely that with 12 tribes and significant individuals in each that this is the largest cast of characters put together by Millar. And they all work well for him, and as a good author he never loses track of any of them. With this book Martin reveals how much of himself has gone in to previous characters, from the paranoia of Alby in his first novel to the flat dwelling, computer game playing, ancient culture coveting Aran in his fifth. The tales of Iris and her past lives evoke memories of the past lives of Lux in his second novel. While Megan's references to all the saints, one for every occasion, reminds us of Ruby's assorted gods in his third novel. Millar himself refers to his fourth novel several times through the course of this piece - its story of fairies and his intent to do a follow up once public disapproval dies down. Finally the events experienced by Melody seem to be a twist on those which afflicted the scheming Elfish in his fifth novel, the twist being that Melody is such a different person compared to Elfish.

So this book has similarities with Millar's previous work, though is perhaps his best to date. But none of those similarities are direct - more continuations and acknowledgments. Regardless, this is certainly a triumphant return after a silence induced by publisher problems. If you have read and enjoyed Millar's previous work you will love this - if you have not read Millar then this is a good time to start.

RVWR: PTR
September 1998