Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Title: The Cutting Room
Author: Louise Welsh
Publisher: Canongate
The Cutting Room is the highly acclaimed debut novel by Scottish writer Louise Welsh. On the one hand celebrated as being a striking new crime novel, while on the other being described as a work that transcends the genre. Personally I think I'm in the transcends genre camp, though that is most likely because I don't entirely believe that it is a crime novel at all.
Despite the fact that I found The Cutting Room to be reasonably enjoyable, I do have to say that I mainly found it unsatisfying. At the root of that dissatisfaction is the complete lack of tension that I feel. As we reach the climax, there is a twist of sorts and the tension should come from the last mad rush. However it doesn't really have the effect, I don't really get that mad rush - nothing that is happening really seems to make a difference.
Rilke is an agent for an auction house, and with the death of Mr. McKindless it looks like they are being offered the biggest job the company has seen in a long time. However Rilke is sent off on a tangent of obsession when he finds some photographs in the attic of the house. They seem to show the murder of a young woman, and there seems to be a link to the dead man. This is where I hit on the core of the book, and the reason why I get no real sense of tension or urgency. The photographs are clearly old, so if a woman died, then she died some 30-40 years before. If Mr. McKindless was involved in her death, then he isn't going to be threatening anyone else, since he is dead. In fact Rilke seems to spend far too much time trying to determine whether the photos are even real for us to feel particularly concerned by their content. On his quest for the truth Rilke certainly meets plenty of dubious characters, and is warned that they are bad bastards and he shouldn't mess. Despite this suggestion there is no evidence of threat until the last 20-30 pages and even then it's too quick to change the feeling of the previous 200.
Almost as central to the book as the photographs is the character of Rilke, and the fact that he is homosexual. In some ways I can't decide what to make of the portrayal of Rilke. At one point he expresses negative feeling towards the gay clichés, Judy Garland records and affected campness. So we know that Rilke isn't that kind of gay, in fact for the most part Rilke is just a regular guy - which, lets face it, is how it should be. However Rilke seems to spend a reasonable amount of time in parks, bar toilets and generally with strangers, taking every opportunity to have sex. In some ways this comes across as another kind of cliché, the cruising and the ease and the promiscuity of the scene. Sure, this is a more honest portrayal, no doubt, than the Judy Garland style approach, but it is still one that seems exaggerated by the familiarity. On the other hand for people that pay attention to these kind of things, the fact that Rilke is the main character is probably a big deal, especially when the response to the book is taken into account.
With that in mind it will be interesting to see how the film fares. The latest press reporting that Robert Carlyle has been cast in the lead role. As cinema is a more popular medium the debate over the prominent gay role will no doubt be more conscious. In some ways I think the ending of the book feels somewhat cinematic and as such it may well work better on the big screen. The cast of characters should also be quite colourful for an adaptation.
For me the whole interaction of the character and who he meets is more interesting than the actual thing which is supposed to drive the book. His reaction to a young man he meets being perhaps the most endearing thing about the character, contrasting the bulk of what we are shown. Still I remain unconvinced in the end, with some heavy handed scenes, and certain lines of the book really detracting from the whole.
RVWR: PTR
August 2003
