“Prospect Hill”
by Richard Francis

An assumption is often made – most frequently on the other side of the Atlantic –  that a narrative must be of sufficiently high octane to prevent our attentions from wavering. And one of the delights of a book such as Prospect Hill is its refusal to capitulate to Hollywood-constructed demands for razzmatazz. Richard Francis’s new book is, in a sense, a most unglamorous of creations. Set in Cotsford (a fictionalised Stockport) in 1970, and centred loosely around the forthcoming local elections and the controversial construction of a block of high rise flats, it follows a short period of time in the lives of some residents of this unremarkable satellite town. As a setting, then, this is distinctly low on glitz, and in this respect it is indeed a brave choice. But this is a novel that transcends such superficial requirements, and focuses instead upon what is at stake in all good fiction: the engagement with human detail that is the making of truly memorable stories.

In another break with what might be termed convention, there is also no clear protagonist. The story begins with May Rollins, a Tory councillor and J.P. who lives with her aging, apparently mad mother, Hilda, who she blames both for her inability to find private happiness and the negative self-image that constantly stands in its way. But although Prospect Hill appears initially to be centralised here, the narrative continually moves ‘outwards’, as it were, creating a panoramic effect of layered, yet cleverly interwoven stories and voices. Among these rich and subtly drawn characters are Trevor Morgan, May’s Labour opponent, who works in a bank and with whom she strikes up a bizarre, precipitatory, relationship; Cherry, her capricious daughter-in-law; Art Whiteside, the caddish, yet paradoxically constant estate agent with the capacity to feel true love; Wendy, his secretary; Marge Bentley, a downtrodden prostitute and her delinquent son Fray; and Hilda herself, May’s mad mother who sings uncontrollably and has an obsession with knives. 

One of the great things that this novel manages to achieve, through the clever use of a switching view point that wanders consistently yet never disorientates, is the way that it draws us into its own peripheries. The characters who we might expect to be marginalized (mirroring their social marginalisation) are instead given a voice; they are brought in from the cold. Hilda, for example, who May and Cherry assume to be insane, is given a psychology, a story, and it is revealed, in a moment of great pathos, that she is not mad but merely unable to verbalise the coherence of her thoughts: ‘She could think her thoughts and decide what to say, but when she opened her little door they couldn’t get out, or if they did they got all jumbled and torn, like a crowd fleeing a burning cinema. The only words that seemed to work properly were in songs, because they were sent on their way and kept in their right order by the notes.’ Equally Fray, whose prostitute mother pimped him out to ‘uncles’ when he was young and who passes unrecognised in the street, is given a voice, and a significant role in the surprising denouement. In a sense, then, Prospect Hill is the most egalitarian of novels, although Francis’s great skill is in the ambiguities that resonate through all his characters. There are no good prostitutes and dastardly Tories here, but a subtly achieved recognition that human psychology is a complex mechanism that makes all judgements a risky, often premature business. One of the constant themes at play here is the gulf between public and private lives – what one ‘is’ and what one ‘appears to be’ – and the ways that identities are constructed around the multi-faceted perspectives of both ourselves and others. Again, the use of multiple-view points enables Francis to explore this interplay – down to the point, ultimately, where all notions of singular, linear identities are completely destabilised – to great success. And as a result, one comes away from this novel with an overwhelming sense of the importance of the shades of grey – a sense which resonates, in a manner that is ultimately very moving, with an intuitive awareness of both our own selves and the wider human condition.

One thing that perhaps does the hardback edition of this novel few favours is the emphasis in the publisher’s blurb upon the ‘comic’ nature of Francis’s writing. Whilst this is by no means a sombre book – it has a levity about it that derives, one feels, from a genuine fondness for his fictional creations – it is by no means ‘comic’ in the laugh out loud sense. Do not come to Prospect Hill expecting a mayhem-strewn romp. Richard Francis is no Tom Sharpe, thankfully. Expect instead a moving, at times disturbing journey through a period of human history that is distinguishable both by the shrewd, intricately observed details of its particular setting, and also, importantly, the universality of the conclusions that it draws.

Richard Francis has been referred to elsewhere as a Great British Eccentric, and I would not dispute the value of this description. His ‘eccentricity’ might well be considered a function of his unwillingness to conform to stereotypes and novelistic paradigms. But more important, for me, is his humanism. Prospect Hill is, above all, a great, tender, celebratory piece of writing about the diversity of the human condition. Buy it. Read it. Read it again. It really is that good.

“Prospect Hill” is published by Fourth Estate, on sale in all the usual places. (Ed.)