Dead Long Enough

by James Hawes

Harry MacDonald had seen plenty of skulls - arsing about with some poor sod or other's skull is what pays Harry's rent - but until the day of his official thirty-ninth birthday (actually, Harry was knocking on forty), which was also the day he met Shnade again, he had never noticed the shape of his own skull-to-be; and until the night of that same day, he had never seen a living skull being crunched deliberately, wetly inwards. Perhaps it all happened because Harry had got lost in his work for too long. Or perhaps because Shnade had got lost doing nothing for too long. Or perhaps because all of us, Harry and Shnade included, are lost full stop. She's not really Shnade, of course. Shnade was what we heard, and is what we called her, and is what she will be, to me any rate, for as long as I have. When Shnade swung round, I saw her dress flick along with the movement of her hips and brush Harry's thigh. It was a light, small, flimsy dress of reddish cotton; she wore it over some kind of black, shiny, strappy, swimsuitish thing. You could see this big tattoo of a lizard that ran right from her shoulder to her wrist. And you could tell that when her dress swished across the thigh of Harry's jeans, it felt to him like it was made of chain-mail. And I think, looking back, we all knew, right then, that Harry was fucked.

Genres: Fiction

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

James Hawes grew up in Gloucestershire, Edinburgh and Shropshire. He took a First in German at Hertford College, Oxford, then did a postgrad theatre studies in Cardiff, Wales. Having failed as an actor, he worked as an English teacher in Spain. In 1985-6 he was in charge of CADW excavations at the now-UNESCO World Heritage site of Blaenavon Ironworks. He took a PhD on Nietzsche and German literature 1900-1914 at University College, London 1987-90, then lectured in German at Maynooth University (Ollscoil Mhá Nuad) in Ireland between 1989 and 1991 before doing so at Sheffield University and Swansea University.

James has published six novels, all with Jonathan Cape. He turned to creative non-fiction with a Kafka anti-biography, Excavating Kafka (2008) which became the subject of a BBC documentary. In 2015, Englanders and Huns was shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political Books of the Year 2015. The Shortest History of Germany, published in May 2017, reached #2 in the Sunday Times bestseller charts in April 2018, being pipped for #1 only by Noah Yuval Harari. The Shortest History of England appeared in October 2020 and reached #4 in the Times bestseller charts in July 2021.

James has reviewed and/or written for every UK broadsheet, on topics from DIY to Prince Philip. His journalistic high-points to date were the cover-story for The New Statesman in September 2017 and the long read The England Delusion in Prospect in August 2021; this was publicly described by Prof Ciaran Martin, CB, founding Chief Executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, as “a really brilliant essay on the historical origins of UK constitutional tensions”. He has appeared on Radio 4 Today, Channel 4 News, Sky News and GB News.

In 2022, he was “series story consultant” and key on-screen commentator in the eight-part BBC TV series “Art that Made Us”. He also wrote the accompanying book.

His next book will be The Shortest History of Ireland.

Reviews

[Sam Romilly · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a disappointment compared to White Merc with Fins. This book is just made up of one drunken rant after another. All by people with little in the way of attraction who seem to have messed up their lives from stupidity or inaction. There is little plot to follow and what there is seems to be made up as it was written. Even the death of Harry seems to have been thrown in as a way to switch the attention back to the narrator who up to the point had been passively following Harry throughout his whole life. The love affair just comes across as a drug fuelled infatuation dragged on needlessly until you end up just wishing the book would end.

[Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend recommended this book to me because he thought the author has a clever way of turning a phrase, making up for the lack of much in the way of a plot. He was right. It's quite easy to sum up the message of this story, which is that by the time we reach 40 years old or so, most people are done looking forward and preoccupied with looking back, obsessed with youth which we barely appreciated when it was around because youth is no longer in our possession. I was reminded a little of Nick Hornsby's prose, but perhaps mainly because the characters are British. Towards the end of Dead Long Enough the protagonist makes a vital life altering decision, spurred on by the death of an old friend. In essence he opts to try another way of living rather than continuing a slow but steady march towards dying. I'm not really giving anything away because the ending is revealed within the first few pages, and we read on to find out precisely how/why forecasted events take place. More how than why really, because we know why the characters feel and think and act as they do from the get go. They're no longer young but still wish they were. Their future is no longer limitless and crammed with potential, but there's still plenty of worthwhile living to do, so might as well make moves to make the best of it. The alternative of course is acceptance that it's all quickly downhill from here, and perhaps the downhill part is inevitable but we can at least do a little something about the rate of acceleration. James Hawes doesn't express a whole lot more than this in his novel, but the language he uses to do so makes the trip worth taking.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 friends meet up once a year for the fake birthday party of their celebrity mate. Every year they go somewhere daft and behave like hooligans. Years ago this started as a simple celebration, but has turned into a mission for each of them so as to feel not old – for just one evening.

This year they go to Ireland and life changes for all of them forever. Love, pain, dreams, memories, fame, drink, denial, sex, drugs and death – they are all in there.

The book is written in a rambling fashion which is surprisingly easy to read. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the four but seems somehow not to be one sided. Within the narration of events, the narrator includes both personal and social commentary. There were many sections of this book I wanted to write down to refer to again. James Hawe sees the world in an interesting way I could relate to and includes within his characters some interesting multi-dimensional facets.

This is an easy to read book but one that lingers. The characters are mostly real and you will land up liking some of them.

Worth a read and even worth owning. If you can find it in a second hand show – don’t hesitate to buy it!

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a very British sort of depressed. There's a few funny-ish moments. Too much ranting about nothing too much. A kind of cool plot underneath it all. Characters who you neither like nor dislike, but just can't be arsed with. It's the literary equivalent to a resigned, 'Meh.'