Guy Fraser-Sampson

I have reviewed both Jim Murdoch's previous novels and have thoroughly enjoyed doing so. Rather than following that particular story any further, though, Murdoch has embarked in a totally new direction. Milligan and Murphy expressly refers to Mercier and Camier, a Beckett novel in which two men repeatedly try to leave a particular town without success, and the allusion is obvious as out two eponymous heroes first finally leave the town of their birth on a whim and then spend the rest of the book walking to other places which seem exactly the same, while debating why they left in the first place and dealing with their guilt about having abandoned their mother. In Beckett's book, Camier is a private eye, and in a nice touch Murdoch has the two boys successfully located by a private eye hired by their mother, allowing a few wry reflections on the nature of the detective's process.

There are other influences too. Surely the name of the first character is not accidental, for there are frequent whiffs of Puckoon, one of Jim's (and my) favourite books, and I thought I detected a sense of Jack Trevor Story in some of the dialogue. Jim's unique voice shines through, however, and just as well since he is a very fine writer indeed.

It is particularly impressive that he has managed to produce a novel which is so different in subject matter, style and characterisation from his first two. I can only begin to guess how many hours it must have taken to think himself into the minds of his characters.

I am not going to reveal the ending, not least because there is an amusing and thought-provoking passage about the nature of the end to a novel. In order to know the ending, the author argues, you have to know at which point in the story the writer decided to stop telling it.

I really recommend this book. Order it from your local bookshop ISBN 978-0-9550636-6-4

Originally posted on Pursewarden on 9th January 2012

 John Baker

Perhaps this is as good a place as any, as our heroes wend their way towards the future, to describe in some small detail the countryside through which they trudged. If I were to provide you with a simple-to-understand expression to describe where Lissoy was, then 'in the middle of nowhere' would be fairly accurate: somewhere dwindled into anywhere and the next thing you knew you were nowhere. The 'nowhere' consisted of bogs and moors with only a single road leading to the place and that road bounded by hedgerows along its full length as if to keep the inevitable at bay. The laws of scenery were not flouted but they were only paid lip service to. The landscape was one of emigration and emptiness, a thing trampled into the past. It did everything in its power to resist interpretation. It was as if anything that might have caught the eye had been eroded by time and this was all that it had left; that would vanish, too, one day but that day had not arrived. The mountain, Binn Moan, rose like a cry in the wilderness but, even so, did its level best to blend itself in with the sky and go unnoticed.

Jim Murdoch's new novel, Milligan and Murphy, introduces us to two half-brothers, John Murphy and John Milligan, both of them forty years of age and still at home with their Ma. In the manner of Samuel Beckett we are introduced to a couple of accidental people living accidental lives. I mention Beckett in passing because Milligan and Murphy is inspired by Mercier and Camier, a Beckett novel in which two men repeatedly try to leave town without success

On the way to a local farm for a day's work, the brothers decide to leave their lives behind and head for the coast. We, as loyal readers, are allowed to follow closely behind.

They arrive in Drumclaven, a shitehole according to Dervla Mahoney, the local barmaid. They have a brush with the local constable and take some refreshment in the form of half-pints of Guinness before moving on. There occurs, from time to time, a kind of merging of their identities which led me to see them as different aspects of the same being; perhaps the conscious and the unconscious mind:

'Do you think we did the right thing?'
It was Milligan talking. For a second Murphy thought it was just one of the voices in his head.

The next town along the way was to be Rathnerth, but on the way they meet up with Aghamore Ahern, an artist, philosopher and dandy and, reluctantly, share a barbecued crow with him.

By the time Milligan and Murphy have reached Rathnerth and moved in with Mad Meg, their story seems to have come full-circle and moved to its end. The brothers soon fall for home comforts and begin to fade into the landscape. But it isn't so; the end I mean.

Before long they find themselves in Portlow, a place colder and wetter than Lissoy. Milligan never imagined there ever could exist such a place. But he'd been wrong before.

In his novels and plays Samuel Beckett is keen to point out the double meaning of 'enclosure' for his characters. And Murdoch amplifies this theme in his novel. The box or room or place of confinement is at the same instant the loved home and the dark prison. Our characters' need to escape from this prison/home is a constant desire.

What Beckett does over and over again is to take his characters and his audience from safe to unsafe places. And this is exactly what Jim Murdoch does with Milligan and Murphy. When we leave them they are on board a ferry to England:

Milligan stood clinging for dear life to the rail at the stern of the ship and looked back. He suspected that he was going to be physically sick before he stepped onto dry land again. He was neither here nor there and that was another feeling he didn't like one bit. And alone. He had never felt so alone. The sea; the world; in fact all of eternity spread out before him from this point. He felt like old Noah or the Ancient Mariner must have looking out at limitless sea, unable to cope with the significance of what they saw.

The sea looks like nothing he has ever seen before. He and Murphy have escaped their confinement within the box of their Ma and Lissoy and are in the process of leaving behind their cultural heritage. They are taking the journey from the surface of consciousness to the depths of the unconscious. And Jim Murdoch takes us along, too, down the same path, just as Beckett would have done. One part of us is kicking and screaming, wanting to stay in the safe place, but another part knows we will never be satisfied until we are properly born.

Originally posted on John Baker's Blog on 15th January 2012

 Dave King

Let me say straight away that I very much enjoyed this book. I found it an excellent read. It was necessary to get that in first lest you, dear reader, should take the wrong impression from what I am about to say, which is that the book begins very slowly. Indeed, for the first twenty pages or so nothing very much happens — and then nothing much happens at something less than walking pace. It is not a fault, this slow start, it is a necessary acclimatisation to the pace of the story about to unfold and to the pace and energy levels of its two heroes.

Reading these early pages I constantly heard — or thought I heard — echoes of Samuel Beckett. I began to fantasize that maybe Milligan and Murphy were two characters who'd proved surplus to requirements when he was writing Waiting for Godot or one of his other plays. Maybe that was just my own mind set — I had been thinking about the play not long before. Whichever way it was, rest assured Vladimir and Estragon, Milligan and Murphy are not. And as there is no firm reason why a review should be chronological or follow a logical course, it might be helpful if I say here and now that when I was a bit further into the book I suddenly realised that I was not hearing echoes of Beckett, but a different, and I believe original, voice.

There is, shall I call it a family resemblance, but nothing more than that. For one thing, there are levels of philosophical debate (home spun philosophy for the most part, it is true, but philosophy none the less) in their apparently vacuous talk. This for instance from the early part of the book (it is Murphy talking):

"Do you not think that Mary Maguire has the most magnificent breasts?"
"I think it is a bit early in the morning to be considering weighty matters such as those."
"They're massive, they truly are."
"It makes me thirsty just thinking about them Murphy. Can we go and get fed now? I'm so hungry I could eat a cow."

Somewhere a bit earlier than this I should have told you something about our two heroes. They are half brothers. Murphy was a little late in arriving in this world and sometime after the event his father disappeared in strange circumstances. Whether or not the two events were connected appears to be in some sort of doubt. Mrs Murphy, it seems, took off with Murphy Junior in search of an adequate replacement, but ended up with Mr Milligan. Milligan and Murphy are inseparable, still living with mum and still sharing a bedroom, if not a bed. In any other milieu we might have dubbed them layabouts, but so invisibly do they merge into the oddities of Lissoy, the little village in Ireland which is home to them, that such a judgement would seem harsh.

The story proper begins with Ma Milligan telling them that "O'Connor is on the lookout for bodies for his farm." Milligan appeals against the implied instruction in this on the ground that it is Tuesday, the day on which it is customary to collect their unemployment assistance. This argument is quickly shot down in flames and they set off for O'Connor's farm. They never arrive.

The last thing Milligan and Murphy could be accused of is being proactive. They do not control their lives. Stuff happens (like they come upon an unconscious tramp at the crossroads) and they take a certain direction, are nudged towards it. It is not quite clear how the event causes the result, but somehow that is what happens. They do not take the turning that leads to O'Connor's farm. The road they are on goes on, and somehow so do they. A pivotal moment in their lives passes unrecognised and vanishes for ever into the great blue yonder.

So begins their odyssey. During it they will discuss the meaninglessness of life with four strangers they will meet: the aforementioned tramp, a priest, an artist and an old woman. They are not without their humorous aspects, these conversations, as here with Jesse, the old woman, in her kitchen after she has befriended them and taken them to her home. Murphy says:

"Over the last few days three people have spoken to my brother and me, in brief and at length, about the meaningless of existence: a tramp, a priest of all people, an artist and now you: this can't be a coincidence."
"What, and you think that means something?" Her tone was sarcastic. "You think God is trying to tell you that he doesn't exist? Ha!"

Not wishing to give away too much of the story, I will just add that Milligan and Murphy ends with the two of them leaning on the rail of a ship bound for Southampton, they having at an earlier point in their odyssey decided that it was the sea for them - though somehow I don't believe that will be the end of the tale.

Originally posted on Pics and Poems on 23rd January 2012

 Loren Eaton

I had a liberal-arts undergraduate education, one of those programs in which students take tons of classes outside their field of study. In addition to studying all sorts of literature, I filled my schedule with courses on rhetorical theory, world history, meteorology and drama. That last class was where I encountered Samuel Beckett's Endgame. While I wouldn't call the Irish author's bleak offshoot of existentialism my favourite philosophy, I learned to like his play about two lost souls struggling in a postapocalyptic wasteland. Now through his new novel Milligan and Murphy, long-time Beckett pasticheur Jim Murdoch has taught me there's something else to enjoy in the man's work- humour.

The two brothers Milligan and Murphy aren't exactly what one might call distinguished examples of manhood. Though in the middle of their years, they still live in their mother's house in [the] gloomy town of Lissoy. Despite dwelling all their lives in a hamlet drenched with ennui and rain, the two seem comfortable drinking, fornicating, lounging about, collecting welfare and generally avoiding any sort of responsibility. Then their mother shoos them to old O'Connor's farm for some day work, and the two trudge down the road toward it. And then past it. And then on to the next town and the next and the next. Milligan and Murphy have no clear goal in their heads, nor can they answer one simple question: What made them decide to abandon their home?

Milligan and Murphy goes in deep for theme, and like Beckett himself, it seems to espouse a sort of nihilism. At one stop on their aimless trek, Murphy notes, "Over the last few days, three people have all spoken to my brother and me, in brief and at length, about the meaninglessness of existence: a tramp, a priest of all people, an artist and now you: this can't be a coincidence." Of course, it is a coincidence, just like everything else in life. Not that the realization crushes the hapless protagonists. Rather, they see existential absurdity as an excuse to search out their own meaning. Murphy later opines, "There's nothing to be found if we go nowhere or if we go back there to spend the evenings, when one hasn't even the price of a pint to one's name, thumbing through Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia trying to locate photographs of half-naked Africans." Call it adventurous nihilism, if you like.

If the novel only had theme going for it, then it would likely garner hearty approbation or distaste, depending on each individual's viewpoint. Discussions on the significance (or lack thereof) of ultimate things tends to polarize readers. Fortunately, Murdoch's droll style keeps the proceedings pretty darn funny. For example, the narrator explains in the introductory paragraph how Milligan and Murphy aren't full blood brothers, but rather "they were half-brothers; each had been dragged screaming from the innards of the same mother though a different father had been guilty for them winding up there." Murdoch somehow also manages to make funny the killing of a crow for food, an-ahem-act of "solitary vice," and the preferred payment a less-than-comely wench exacts for her services. The brotherly pair may not be the most likeable sort and some may find their worldview dicey, but no one can deny Murdoch's writing chops. Milligan and Murphy is some kind of funny.

Originally posted on I Saw Lightning Fall on 26th January 2012