Antony Moore

This is one of those books I should have reviewed back when I first read it, but am only truly getting around to now. The cover was what first attracted me to it, and ultimately proved to be the very best thing about the book. Brilliant, classic comic book style cover that reveals, in part, what the bulk of the book is following. In this case, a stunted man's desire to get back his childhood copy of Action Comics #1 from a boy he traded it to for a different comic.

This book is meant to be humorous, but to me it just came across as entirely frustrating. This read a bit like a first draft that needed a few more rewrites and a better editor before being released. I found nothing about the main character compelling or desirable, which made the women in his life rather unbelievable. The ending, likewise, frustrated me deeply as little about the main character changed. He remained the stunted loser he was at the start, lacking remorse or basic empathy for others. I have no patience for anyone so self-pitying who has no desire to better themselves and he seemed to fall fully into that category for me.

This was just a very unrewarding, frustrating read for me overall.… (meer)

Ce livre est celui d'un anti-héros prénommé Harvey. Il est le propriétaire d'un magasin de bande dessinées, aime beaucoup la bière et est donc un peu bedonnant. Il passe le plus clair de son temps à soupirer et à se lamenter — il me fait un peu penser au vendeur de comics avec catogan des Simpson. La principale cause de ses lamentations est un cuisant souvenir d'enfance. N'allez pas croire qu'il était la tête de turc de son école, non, bien au contraire, il faisait partie à l'époque — puisque ce n'est plus trop le cas désormais — du clan des branchés. Sa principale occupation était, comme tout membre de ce club, de tyranniser un élève surnommé "Bleeder". Tout était donc pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes jusqu'au jour où, comble des idées saugrenues, il a décidé de faire un échange avec ce souffre-douleur — d'où le titre du livre.
Cet échange d'une BD contre un objet quelconque semble somme toute assez banal. Objet dont il a d'ailleurs oublié depuis le nom et la fonction. Par contre, ce dont il se souvient très clairement c'est de la BD : le premier numéro de Superman. De quoi à avoir quelques regrets lorsque l'on sait — et il est bien placé pour — qu'un exemplaire peut se vendre pour 1 million de dollars. Sentant bien que cette histoire le mine et est la cause de tous ses problèmes, il décide de se rendre à la réunion annuelle des anciens élèves afin d'en avoir le coeur net.
Antony Moore — c'est un pseudonyme — est un psychanalyste anglais qui est manifestement doté d'un bon sens de l'humour. Ce livre est drôle, rafraîchissant et se lit comme une bande dessinée. Pour vous donner une idée du style voici ce que donne la description d'un réveil après une soirée un peu trop arrosée :

On aurait dit que quelqu'un s'était introduit dans sa bouche pendant la nuit et s'en était servi comme toilettes; il avait au fond de la gorge une matière inconnue et malodorante, et en même temps, une sorte d'humidité visqueuse et anormale sur la langue.

On ne s'ennuie pas un instant et on prend un plaisir malsain à suivre les aventures de notre malheureux héros. Une lecture très sympathique — et n'en attendez pas autre chose — qui me fait un peu penser à un livre que j'avais beaucoup apprécié il y a quelques années: Auteur en sursis de John Colapinto. http://www.aubonroman.com/2010/12/swap-par-antony-moore.html… (meer)

Antony Moore's debut novel The Swap is, much to this reviewer's surprise, a better novel than I think it intends to be. With its close-up comic-book cover, a somewhat self-deprecating back cover blurb, and a hero who's greatest aspiration turns out to be little more than screwing up as little as possible, one would probably enter this book with low expectations. And with a few exceptions (including a sadly egregious one), one would be right.

The novel begins with a brief scene between two children, in which one inexplicably exchanges his pristine copy of Superman One for a useless length of pipe. The two go their separate ways and we recover their trails twenty years later: the young thug who gave away the comic has turned out to be Harvey Briscoe, a fat chain-smoking nothing who runs (poorly) a comic shop and endlessly rues the day he gave away his most prized possession. The occasion of his high school reunion heralds the return of the man he swapped with, Charles "Bleeder" Odd, who has become marvelously successful and, Harvey presumes, might be willing to give back the comic and let bygones be bygones.

From this simple setup, the novel spirals quickly out of control. Murder and misappropriation set the wheels into motion, and Moore handles the shift from innocent scheme to diabolical plotting with ease. If there is any complaint to be had about the nature of the mystery, it is that the substance of the murder, and the clues that spring up every now and then, are minimal at best. We spend a great deal of time in Harvey's mind as he works out scenarios, but the actual case is far simpler and more niftily resolved than the suspense would lead us to believe.

On the upside, the reader is treated to an in-depth examination of Harvey, a character who turns out to be much more enthralling and more sympathetic than we expect. Without giving away too much of the plot, it still seems fair to say that Harvey's critical flaw is that he makes way too much of the forces that surround him, always opting for the convoluted way out as opposed to the more simple idea. It turns him into a pleasantly complex character: a man whose whole life is comic books finds himself in a hard-boiled mystery that he feels he alone must solve, almost as if he himself is turning into a character. It's a wonderfully executed parallel.

Fortunately, Moore's supporting cast doesn't let Harvey down. The story is populated with characters that are fairly obviously drawn in black and white, and we know from the get-go who is good and who is bad. Jeff, the truly thuggish bully, provides a number of potential conflicts and shifts to the mystery, and though he is pretty unoriginal, he serves his function to the story well. Maisie too is a refreshing but flat love interest, Harvey's foil in many ways but also attracted to him in an unrealistic (but very comic-like) manner. And though Bleeder Odd appears only at a few select moments in the book, Harvey's obsession and description bring him to life like a fine supporting actor.

If the novel's characterization is its strength, though, the plotting of the climax is its downfall. There is a certain amount of inexorability that Moore plants throughout the novel: even though the ultimate resolution of the murder is only a little bit surprising, we see it coming and anticipate that things will all reveal themselves feasibly in the end. Instead, perhaps taking the "cliffhanger" approach, Moore turns the tables on the reader in the final pages, crafting an ending that is as frustrating as it is unsatisfying. It's hard to describe without spoiling it all, but suffice to say that it doesn't seem terribly consistent with the wonderful characterization that was the novel's hallmark. One suspects Moore wanted to throw in one last twist to stun the reader, but it feels more like a punch in the gut than a playful shove. Until the last 20 pages, the novel was fantastic; the final moments, however, felt a bit like a betrayal.

Despite the last-second machinations of a perhaps overly clever author, The Swap manages to elevate itself beyond its presumptively humble origins. The work rises above the level of mere pulp, delivering characters that we care enough about to want to follow them through a journey of increasing (and increasingly unnecessary) complexity. While the audience for such a novel seems hard to pin down, it is a mostly fine example of a classical mystery, smattered with British slang and plenty of vulgarity, yet possessing a surprising amount of heart. It's most certainly worth the read -- well, at least the first 250 pages are. After that, you be the judge.… (meer)