Callum, Reine, Sylvie and Sparrow by James Yorkston: A fragmentary novel

It was that colourful jacket that first caught my eye on NetGalley, backed up by an inviting blurb. James Yorkston’s Callum, Reine, Sylvie and Sparrow follows the eponymous Callum over two decades beginning in 1998, flitting backwards and forwards with several digressions.

I mean it’s still Alan – same thin sharp nose, same gnarly spindly fingers, same look of fear in his eyes if you look hard enough…. But now he’s dressed like a dancer from a Greek tourism brochure.

Callum and Reine have recently and regretfully divorced. Almost thirty, she’s given up hopes of an artistic career but he still clings to dreams of making it in music, racketing along from one part time job to another, not getting far. Surprised to get an invitation to an exhibition in Dingle from an old friend, he decides to drive from Edinburgh to his father’s old family home, taking in a visit to Alan along the way. Several adventures ensue before he arrives in Dingle surprised to find his friend transformed from an uncompromising hell-raiser to a seller of twee artwork, and even more so to hear that Reine is in town. Five years later, Callum is playing a gig in Paris where he meets Sylvie, falling for her and amazed to find she’s also fallen for him. They build a life together in Scotland, eventually having a family, struggling with the illness that afflicts one of their children but coping with it lovingly, and together. Twenty years after Callum set off to Ireland, miserable and alone, life has settled and he’s happy.

And at the end of the evening, the songs begin, slowly crawling around the bar, everyone expecting to sing, including the barman himself.

Hard to encapsulate this self-billed fragmentary novel in a straightforward synopsis. Interspersed with Callum’s story are a couple of interviews from his local radio stint, childhood anecdotes and memories, episodes from his adult life, including a particularly enjoyable one working as a bookseller. That may sound unwieldy, but it all hangs together beautifully, peopled with a cast of vivid characters, from Tam who finds himself dog walking for a celebrity holed up trying to avoid paparazzi to Edna, an eccentric author and close friend of his father’s, and a constant in Callum’s life. Yorkston is a singer songwriter which perhaps explains his ability to catch his characters’ voices so well. Both radio interviews are in dialect which can be excruciating if done badly but works perfectly here. There’s such affection in his characterisation that I wondered how much Yorkston had drawn on his own life, borne out by a memorial note following the section on Sparrow. Poignant, funny and absorbing, his novel is a treat. This is his fourth book: the last one was a well-received noir; another is a collection of his music touring diaries. A successful musician, he’s clearly a multitalented guy, reminding me of Malachy Tallack whose That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz I enjoyed so much.

Oldcastle Books: Harpenden 9780857306357 224 pages Paperback (NetGalley)