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Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness
“One can either do this or do that … do it or not do it – you will regret both.” Søren Kierkegaard
A bench looking out onto the harbour on the French-Spanish border; a cash-strapped existence strolling the sunbaked streets and promenades of Seville, or the cold embrace of the daily grind back in hometown USA; Granville, cut adrift in Europe, has a choice to make.
His solution is not to.
It is a life here, or a life there. As some semblance of one emerges, another grows across the Atlantic, until these two lives Granville never had both collapse around him.
This daring and experimental novel addresses the existential dilemma of location; how the regret of a choice not made overpowers the satisfaction of one taken; an antithesis on taking decisions, yet a manifesto on living them.
A bench looking out onto the harbour on the French-Spanish border; a cash-strapped existence strolling the sunbaked streets and promenades of Seville, or the cold embrace of the daily grind back in hometown USA; Granville, cut adrift in Europe, has a choice to make.
His solution is not to.
It is a life here, or a life there. As some semblance of one emerges, another grows across the Atlantic, until these two lives Granville never had both collapse around him.
This daring and experimental novel addresses the existential dilemma of location; how the regret of a choice not made overpowers the satisfaction of one taken; an antithesis on taking decisions, yet a manifesto on living them.
- GenresFiction
192 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2017
22 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 12, 2018
Granville is an American backpacker fro Wisconsin travelling through Europe. The novel opens with him receiving a cryptic text from his girlfriend back home which he takes as the break-up message; she was pretty pissed that he was going to saunter off around Europe away from her for so long. In his reaction to the text, Granville hurls his phone into the sea and when his satchel is stolen while he's sleeping in a train station waiting room, he now has no means of communicating with anyone back home because it held his laptop. His visa expires in 5 days. What's he going to do, face the music back home, or stay beyond the legal entitlement of his visa and keep moving around Europe?
So I'll start with the good thing about this novel. It has alternate storylines, one where he stays travelling around Europe, eventually settling down in Seville; the other where he returns home. The two stories show diverging 'drives' and make for some interest as a narrative device and gradually you see how they begin to converge and echo one another, for after all, he is the same person with the same emotional makeup.
But now to the bad things. He is utterly feckless. He feels almost nothing save for vapid emptiness. He might actually be depressed, but I think he's just inchoately angsty. Everything revolves around the women in his life, the lost love at home and a new potential love interest there, or the various women he meets in Seville. But god knows why they want to get close to him as there's nothing there. Maybe they don't, and since all they do is smile at him and somehow this is suggested to signpost their interest. The women here are cardboard thin, as thin as all the people he observes in the endless litany of bars and restaurants he sits in trying to escape his vacuity. He is a flaneur, (Walter Benjamin is cited here), but unlike the original sense of flaneur which is observation of the modern city, here everything observed is somehow supposed to reflect back and illuminate his clouded state of mind. Only they can't shift the clouds, because there's nothing to see there in the first place. "I look back at my computer screen. Something doesn't feel right. I feel overwhelmed , but god knows by what". Well if you don't know Granville, sure as hell we've got no chance of knowing either. Utterly feckless, drifting without any sense of anomie, I just wanted to scream at him "sort yourself out pal, we're not that interested in your minuscule, unspecified agonies".
The book reminded me of a poor rate version of Ben Lerner's
Leaving the Atocha Station, in the indulgent, self-obsessed vacuities of an American abroad and their overwrought fantasy life. But that had more weight and interest.
So I'll start with the good thing about this novel. It has alternate storylines, one where he stays travelling around Europe, eventually settling down in Seville; the other where he returns home. The two stories show diverging 'drives' and make for some interest as a narrative device and gradually you see how they begin to converge and echo one another, for after all, he is the same person with the same emotional makeup.
But now to the bad things. He is utterly feckless. He feels almost nothing save for vapid emptiness. He might actually be depressed, but I think he's just inchoately angsty. Everything revolves around the women in his life, the lost love at home and a new potential love interest there, or the various women he meets in Seville. But god knows why they want to get close to him as there's nothing there. Maybe they don't, and since all they do is smile at him and somehow this is suggested to signpost their interest. The women here are cardboard thin, as thin as all the people he observes in the endless litany of bars and restaurants he sits in trying to escape his vacuity. He is a flaneur, (Walter Benjamin is cited here), but unlike the original sense of flaneur which is observation of the modern city, here everything observed is somehow supposed to reflect back and illuminate his clouded state of mind. Only they can't shift the clouds, because there's nothing to see there in the first place. "I look back at my computer screen. Something doesn't feel right. I feel overwhelmed , but god knows by what". Well if you don't know Granville, sure as hell we've got no chance of knowing either. Utterly feckless, drifting without any sense of anomie, I just wanted to scream at him "sort yourself out pal, we're not that interested in your minuscule, unspecified agonies".
The book reminded me of a poor rate version of Ben Lerner's
Leaving the Atocha Station, in the indulgent, self-obsessed vacuities of an American abroad and their overwrought fantasy life. But that had more weight and interest. 
December 11, 2017
“He is on the fringes, camouflaged within the crowd. To him, the streets are a theatre, with an ever-more complex cast and plot. The flâneur is the only observing audience member of this play. Maybe there are other flâneurs, at different vantage points, but what they witness would be a completely different work. As the characters of his theatre present themselves only randomly, in flashes, the flâneur is our only possible protagonist, both sociologist and anthropologist, alienated and immersed in his city.”
Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness, by Simon Kinch, explores a young American man’s ennui as he reaches the end of a three month long tour of Europe. When the story opens he faces a choice – return to his parental home in America as planned or remain where he is. Sitting on a bench in a coastal town between Spain and France he has received a text message from his girlfriend – she is breaking up with him. His reaction is to throw his phone into the sea and abandon plans to visit Paris and then London before flying home as his ticket and visa demands. Instead he returns south, to a hostel in the small Spanish town of Sevilla.
The protagonist, Granville, feels cut adrift. He accepts the easy friendships offered by the other young people he encounters. Knowing that his money is not limitless he finds himself a small job. He observes the lives others lead from his vantage points in cafes and as he walks the streets. He eavesdrops on conversations. Although seeking company, he shies away from attempts by others to get to know him better.
Had he returned to America Granville would also have found a small job to tide him over until he rejoined the road his life would now travel. In dual narratives the reader is offered snapshots of his day to day life in Sevilla and as it would have been in Madison, USA.
The melancholy undertones of the narrative pervade each small choice Granville makes. He is drifting but cannot find a good reason to change this way of living. He misses his girlfriend yet rejects the advances of others if they try to get close. He becomes more interested in the interactions of strangers than in improving his own.
Although told in the first person there is an air of detachment, a recognition that Granville is not behaving in a manner that can be sustained. In Sevilla he can neither speak nor read Spanish yet puts off the need to make longer term decisions. By throwing away his phone he has cut contact with those from home. He recognises that his parents will be worried yet still continues as he is. When crisis points are reached his reactions revolve around avoidance.
Granville struggles with his girlfriend’s rejection, as if not accepting her decision makes it less real. He changes location rather than changing himself. He seeks a dream without the drive to achieve. He is aware yet will not act constructively.
Granville’s drifting is only possible due to his position of privilege, yet the writing engendered a degree of sympathy. The parallel stories provide a vehicle for portraying much that is difficult to express. There have been many classic stories written of men attempting to find their place in a world that rewards behaviour they rail against. This contemporary offering stands with the best.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Salt.
Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness, by Simon Kinch, explores a young American man’s ennui as he reaches the end of a three month long tour of Europe. When the story opens he faces a choice – return to his parental home in America as planned or remain where he is. Sitting on a bench in a coastal town between Spain and France he has received a text message from his girlfriend – she is breaking up with him. His reaction is to throw his phone into the sea and abandon plans to visit Paris and then London before flying home as his ticket and visa demands. Instead he returns south, to a hostel in the small Spanish town of Sevilla.
The protagonist, Granville, feels cut adrift. He accepts the easy friendships offered by the other young people he encounters. Knowing that his money is not limitless he finds himself a small job. He observes the lives others lead from his vantage points in cafes and as he walks the streets. He eavesdrops on conversations. Although seeking company, he shies away from attempts by others to get to know him better.
Had he returned to America Granville would also have found a small job to tide him over until he rejoined the road his life would now travel. In dual narratives the reader is offered snapshots of his day to day life in Sevilla and as it would have been in Madison, USA.
The melancholy undertones of the narrative pervade each small choice Granville makes. He is drifting but cannot find a good reason to change this way of living. He misses his girlfriend yet rejects the advances of others if they try to get close. He becomes more interested in the interactions of strangers than in improving his own.
Although told in the first person there is an air of detachment, a recognition that Granville is not behaving in a manner that can be sustained. In Sevilla he can neither speak nor read Spanish yet puts off the need to make longer term decisions. By throwing away his phone he has cut contact with those from home. He recognises that his parents will be worried yet still continues as he is. When crisis points are reached his reactions revolve around avoidance.
Granville struggles with his girlfriend’s rejection, as if not accepting her decision makes it less real. He changes location rather than changing himself. He seeks a dream without the drive to achieve. He is aware yet will not act constructively.
Granville’s drifting is only possible due to his position of privilege, yet the writing engendered a degree of sympathy. The parallel stories provide a vehicle for portraying much that is difficult to express. There have been many classic stories written of men attempting to find their place in a world that rewards behaviour they rail against. This contemporary offering stands with the best.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Salt.
April 15, 2018
Selfish white dude wanders through Europe and the arid land of ennui. It's a dramatisation of longing for an alternative life that doesn't exist, with satisfaction to be found in either realities. It's a dreamscape of travel peppered with characters, mostly women, who the protagonist can't be bothered listening to because he's far too stuck in his own head. I feel like this novel is trying to mimic conventions of a literary tradition I can't be bothered to find out because I fucking hate ennui. This book is to be paired with Aus writer Miles Allinson's The Fever of Animals, which is a similarly self-obsessed, privilege-ignorant sojourn through the confusion of Europe, but enjoys meatier engagement with ideas and art.
June 16, 2020
After receiving some bad news via text, and throwing his phone into the sea, the narrator has to choose what to do with his life. The book explores two different options, and alternate chapters show what his life would be like in either scenario.
The book made me think of the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken because the character behaves and thinks the same in both scenarios, but the scenery and people have changed. The book leaves open the idea that the narrator would be telling with a sigh about how he decisively changed his life by his decision, but our omniscient eye would know that really he's just the same.
The brevity of this novel meant that the idea of seeing how a life would unfold in different (yet the same!) ways felt a bit underdeveloped.
The book made me think of the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken because the character behaves and thinks the same in both scenarios, but the scenery and people have changed. The book leaves open the idea that the narrator would be telling with a sigh about how he decisively changed his life by his decision, but our omniscient eye would know that really he's just the same.
The brevity of this novel meant that the idea of seeing how a life would unfold in different (yet the same!) ways felt a bit underdeveloped.
April 28, 2022
So far my fave fiction of the year. This is a sparse and brief novel- full of existential pain. Its also just beautiful, the kind of book where you read a sentence then hold it in your mind before reading on. Love it love it love it!
December 25, 2017
Successful debut. dreamy state of writing , resulted in a gloomy story.
January 31, 2018
one of the best books I've read in recent times
Congrats Mr Kinch. I love the view/perspective from Granville's eyes
Congrats Mr Kinch. I love the view/perspective from Granville's eyes
February 27, 2018
A succulent and damn-near perfect novel.
March 16, 2018
An interesting, intriguing, enjoyable little book. A kind of sliding doors, in Europe.
October 21, 2019
3.5 interesting and simple, but very short and slightly disorganised
August 7, 2020
I felt there was a lot of a melancholic tone to this book
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews