Feast Days

Ian MacKenzie

Fourth Estate, £12.99

Review: Rosemary Goring

Emma has moved from New York with her husband, an investment banker, to Sao Paolo. "The term among expats for people like me was 'trailing spouse'," she informs us. With that dismal phrase, which offers so much potential for fiction, the scene is set. Here she is, newly married, and still in love with her handsome husband, but with nothing to do but brood.

Unlike other bored wives, be they Brazilian or incomers, our young and educated narrator is not fulfilled by the boozy lunches, the conspicuous consumption. To pass the increasingly heavy hours while "my husband" is at the bank, she does occasional work as an English tutor, thus gaining access to the home lives of privileged Brazilians, and learning what makes this country tick – to the point of exploding.

At the same time she is learning Portuguese. In this she is helped by her fascination with etymology, the roots of words, and those that derive from them, examples of which punctuate the text. Yet even in this arcane area of expertise, she cannot avoid the problem that troubles her marriage. Some words, apparently, add nothing to the language, because "they never produced word children". It's no surprise she is drawn to them. Her husband wants a family, and she is fairly certain she does not want to bring a child into a world in such turmoil.

Her misgivings are understandable. No amount of wealth can cushion her from the disparity in fortunes in this city where protests and marches are a weekly occurrence. Not long after the couple arrive, they are robbed at knife point. Thereafter, Emma is haunted by the youths who stole so brazenly from them - not so much frightened as fascinated at what their lives must be like. And disappointed at her husband's lack of courage.

Ian MacKenzie's second novel, Feast Days begins snappily, thanks to his journalistic brio, and invigorating, gossipy tone. Soon, though, the momentum is lost as you realise his technique is to issue statements, rather than allow the story to flow. His rejection of conventional indentation means every paragraph reads like a fresh revelation, its significance emphasised above its worth.

Clearly, MacKenzie shares Beckett's dislike of paragraphs, to which he refers at one point. He only relinquishes his staccato style when Emma is with Marcos, her husband's colleague, with whom she appears to be contemplating, or having, an affair. Are we to infer that these occasions are full of feeling rather than thought?

Whatever the reason, the release from the declaratory style is a relief, albeit too brief. Yet this typographical tricksiness is a mere detail compared to the subjects Emma addresses, full-on. Feast Days is a cosseted millennial's contemplation of capitalism and globalism, of greed and wealth and what it takes to live well, but without guilt. Indeed, the finest aspect of this novel is its evocation of Sao Paolo, of the frisson and sensuousness of the rich person's life in the midst of most people's struggle. Less impressively, it indulges in gobbets of traveller info about the history of the city, the country, the places Emma visits, along with digressions on the meaning of words that are not as clever as the author intends.

Above all, though, it is a meditation on marriage, a latter day version of the 19th-century novel. Keenly attuned as she is to language, Emma finds it taking on new meaning: "I felt something in my skin, even my heart - a feeling between elation and alarm - when I heard myself using these most basic terms, husband and wife, which seemed like things that did not belong to me."

What ensues is a portrait of a relationship examined as if it were an exercise in emotional etymology. It is slickly done, but unpersuasive. Failing to convey emotion, despite being about nothing else, this is an occasionally confusing and ultimately unsatisfying novel whose central figure has a chilling effect on the whole enterprise. It is not Emma's lack of maternal instinct that makes her feel distant, but her watchfulness. At no time does she feel fully engaged, not even with her husband. His lack of a name, and the jarring clumsiness of not naming him, reinforces the impression that Emma is alone on the page, enjoying the company of her thoughts far more than of real life.