In this bleak, bestselling coming-of-age debut, the author evokes life with the seven dads he had in seven years
F
or Mum (NB: not in a passive aggressive way)” reads the dedication at the beginning of this distinctive debut. It gives us a promising flavour of the voice with whom we’ll be spending the next 340 pages.
The story begins with deceptive simplicity: “Once upon a time, I had seven dads in seven years. This is the story of those years.” The narrative has a section for each “dad”, charting Andrev’s tumultuous childhood and teens as his mother’s boyfriends come and go, all of them disappointing and disruptive, and several of them violent. The dads are named for their dominant trait in young Andrev’s eyes: so we get the Plant Magician, the Thief, the Murderer, the Artist, among others.
It is billed as a novel but we’re in ambiguous territory here. The story is heavily autobiographical, based on Walden’s own childhood experiences. The narrator tells us: “If anything sounds made up, then you can be sure that it is true.” Instead, the inventions are “tucked away in the most mundane parts – like the colour of a cushion”. So we have two Andrevs involved, the child whose bewildered, coming-of-age adventures we follow, and the “real” Andrev, whose name is on the front cover. Metafictional interjections pepper the narrative, the authorial voice frequently intruding to comment on its own decisions, such as Andrev’s observation on the very first page: “I shouldn’t start there. (I have most assuredly already done so, but I think the attempt should remain, given its aptness as a bridge to a dramaturgical arc.)” These postmodern flourishes could have felt grating, but the narrative voice has more than enough wit and charm to carry them off.
