Inspiring Older Readers
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan
It would be tempting to imagine that Ian McEwan’s latest short story/novella, The Cockroach, is some kind of modern day reworking of Kafka’s classic novella, Metamorphosis; or that it at least draws on its imagery and themes. But that would be entirely the wrong conclusion to draw. Granted McEwan’s starting point is a cunning inversion of Kafka’s original conceit, here cockroach turns into man rather than vice versa - but that’s pretty much where the two books diverge. In truth, McEwan’s inspiration seems to be more in the field of Eighteenth Century satire and maybe Swiftian would be a better tag than Kafkaesque. There is, however, an important caveat to attach to that assessment – it’s just nowhere near as good as that.
Sticking with the Eighteenth Century analogy, it would probably be more accurate to see this as a political squib – almost a broadside - aimed at exposing the folly of politicians and the gullible public they claim to serve. McEwan is clearly steamed-up about all things Brexit and the temporary insanity, as he would see it, of the Brexiteer arguments and he’s simply getting it off his chest and out there into the public arena.
Writing at speed and in some degree of exasperation probably isn’t the best way to produce a high class bit of writing and so it proves in this case. The whole notion that the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and even the US President are some kind of changeling vermin taking the chance of a (unexplained) body-swop to wreak terrible damage on the human body politic is a moderately diverting idea that actually can’t sustain its own weight – contradictions and confusions abound and the text is just long enough for you to become uncomfortably aware of them.
Of course, we’re talking here about a top class author and so there are some excellent set pieces in the book and some delightfully sly humour but that really isn’t enough to keep the whole thing afloat in my view.
In the end you have to ask yourself just what the purpose of this novella is meant to be and this is where I struggle the most. It does seem especially unnecessary right now to have to point out the general idiocy and cupidity that is inherent in the current political establishment and simply poking it with a grimace on your face probably has no more impact than a well-placed satirical cartoon might expect to have. So why waste 100 pages saying something that could be achieved in half a page?
My chief beef is that the satire here is just too affable. At the centre of McEwan’s story he has substituted Brexit for an economic madness called ‘Reversalism’, the debate about which has all the same hallmarks of Swift’s Big-Endians and Little-Endians in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ where the split between the Protestant and catholic churches is ruthlessly satirised. But Swift’s version is that much more effective because he doesn’t hold back in his mission to humble and humiliate. I can’t help but feel that McEwan’s rather more laconic, world-weariness breaks through his satire and results in a sort of soft landing. I’m with Charlie Connolly who reviewed the book in The European and who has a similar beef:
"While The Cockroach has moments of insight and a few devices that work very nicely, ultimately it falls just too short of being an effective satire. Laugh out loud moments are hard to find but good satire doesn't always need punchlines, it's the reluctance to really bite into the subject that's most unfulfilling here. When the world is as mad as it is today then satire has to find somewhere else to go but McEwan here always seems to step back from the brink."
Having said all that, I’m always glad to see writers who are prepared to step into the public square and demand to have a say; for that alone, McEwan should be praised. I suspect that the definitive ‘Brexit’ fiction is still some way off – the lava needs time to cool and solidify – but in the meantime why not give this a read one afternoon when it’s just all too much to bear and you might find it a suitable alternative to screaming out aloud.
Terry Potter
November 2019