Catholic Fiction

By David Lodge

reviewed by John Murphy

Home Truths is a bite-sized country manor comedy of manners adapted from the novelist’s stage play. Its theatrical origins are apparent in the three-act structure, the closed-in location (a country cottage), and the dialogue-heavy scenes. Considering how closely it resembles the script for a stage production, one wonders why Lodge felt compelled to turn it into a novella. In any case, it’s an amusing little farce—a truffle, a trifle, from an author who has written profounder works.

The curtain opens on the country cottage of Adrian and Eleanor, an ex-novelist and a ceramics artist, respectively, living in semi-reclusion. Enter Sam Sharp, an old university chum of Adrian’s, who is now a slick Hollywood screenwriter. Sam is upset over a “hatchet job” interview in that day’s Sunday Sentinel—an interview that paints him (probably accurately) as a preening peacock with an unfoundedly high opinion of his work and his sex appeal.

“How do you feel about it?” said Adrian.

“I feel as if I’ve been shat on from a great height by a bilious bird of prey,” said Sam.

The “bird of prey” is Fanny Tarrant, a celebrity journalist of the vulture-variety that no-doubt inspired J.K. Rowling’s delightfully skeevy Rita Skeeter in the Harry Potter series. Tarrant makes her living writing exposés of the Rich and Famous and Sam is her latest meal. (Though Lodge never makes it clear why Tarrant would interview a writer, of all people—when was the last time you saw William Goldman or Steven Zaillian on the cover of a celebrity gossip rag?)

Sam wants Adrian to help him exact revenge on Tarrant by pretending to be interviewed by her while covertly gathering material for a “piss-take profile” in another paper. “Turn the tables on the bitch! Interview her when she thinks she’s interviewing you! Dig into her background. Find out what makes her tick. Why the envy? Why the malice? Lay it all out. Give some of her own medicine. Wouldn’t that be brilliant?”

Not quite brilliant. Adrian agrees, but it’s not for naught that Tarrant is the best in her own sleazy biz. In the tug-of-war that ensues between Adrian and Tarrant, both parties end up confessing more than they intended, leading to some dramatic third-act revelations.

Lodge constructs tales where the outside world suddenly, almost rudely, breaks in on a self-contained universe. Just as Souls and Bodies ended with the election of Pope John Paul II, Home Truths ends with the death of Princess Diana, tragedy that became a media circus and a history-moment that prompted questions about the nature of celebrity, the culture of gossip, and the paparazzi-fed media machine. What worked so well in Souls and Bodies feels here like a cheap gimmick, an inorganic cop-out that lets the protagonists’ off the hook while still furnishing them with a Road-to-Damascus style conversion.

Despite the contrived wedging of Princess Di into the proceedings, Home Truths is a sometimes witty toss-off from a talented writer who is clearly coasting. Taking the piss out of celebrity journalists and self-important novelists isn’t heavy lifting for a writer as accomplished as Lodge. I would even say that Rowling’s Rita Skeeter is a far more imaginative and incisive caricature of celebrity-obsessed culture than Lodge’s tamer (but no more convincing) Fanny Tarrant.

I suppose you can’t hold it against Lodge that he composes an occasional etude between meatier compositions, but it is his own fault for setting the bar high with his other, more substantial work.