Contact

by Jonathan Buckley

This is a startling breakthough novel from Jonathan Buckley, acclaimed author of Ghost MacIndoe and So He Takes the Dog . It will be up for every prize a gripping, utterly compelling book whose themes hit home and hard for the baby boom generation. Dominic Pattison's life is one of level his marriage has proved happy and durable; his business, too, is successful.And then Sam Williams, a builder and ex-squaddie, enters his life. Sam claims to be his son. Yet is Sam who he says he is? After almost thirty years, Dominic can remember little of the affair with Sam's mother. His instinct is to recoil from this aggressive and volatile stranger, who could, with just a few words, take his life apart. But Sam refuses to be dismissed. With its deft switches of sympathy between menaced 'father' and rebuffed 'son' and its exploration of the intricacies of memory, Contact will resonate long with its readers.

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Jonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, grew up in Dudley, and studied English Literature at Sussex University, where he stayed on to take an MA. From there he moved to King’s College, London, where he researched the work of the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. After working as a university tutor, stage hand, maker of theatrical sets and props, bookshop manager, decorator and builder, he was commissioned in 1987 to write the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto.

He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.

His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011). His eighth novel, Nostalgia, was published in 2013.

From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, for whom he convenes a reading group in Brighton.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The premise of Contact is a very simple one. A successful businessman in his fifties is approached by a young man who claims to be his son from an affair that he had thirty years earlier, an affair that he never told his wife about. There's no complicated plot; it's all about the interaction between the two men, the one comfortable and hitherto smug, the other full of barely-suppressed violence.

What gives the book its edge is the complete plausibility of the writing. The characters are entirely convincing and the reader, while seeing the story from the point of view of the businessman, nevertheless comes to empathise with the damaged, dangerous but proud young man who wants to be acknowledged as a member of the family.

The only criticism I have of the book is that nothing is resolved at the end. It's a realistic conclusion but not an emotionally satisfying one. Despite this I found this an utterly engrossing read - the sort of book that makes you miss your stop on the tube.

[Phillip Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dominic Pattison is a successful, business-owning, fifty-something whose comfortable life is disrupted when he is approached by Sam, a builder and former soldier, who claims to be his son - allegedly the product of a long-forgotten affair Dominic had with a woman called Sarah thirty years ago. Foul-mouthed, unrefined and very un-middle-class, Sam becomes an ominous presence in Dominic's life. But is Sam's air of menace merely a product of our narrator's middle class dislike of the uncouth? Is his behaviour really threatening, or is he acting in a perfectly reasonable manner? Is he what he says he is, or is it a scam? And what does what we think, and why, tell us about ourselves?

This is a fraught and compelling novel. It challenges attitudes yet is as much of a page turner as a Robert Goddard thriller and as unsettling as Ian McEwan used to be. Indeed, the echoes of Enduring Love are so strong that when at one point, while Sam is driving him to Sarah's grave, Dominic is distracted by the sight of an ascending hot air balloon, I couldn't help feeling I was being toyed with by the author in much the same way that Sam seems to toy with Dominic.

A weak man desperately trying to keep the barbarian at the gate, is Dominic right to be cautious, or is he just prejudiced? And what is the contact of the title? Physical violence? The military engagements experienced by Sam in Northern Ireland and Iraq? Meetings between an estranged father and son? Or an unwelcome collision between the contented middle class and the uncouth working class they disdain - and fear? There is plenty for readers to think about (and discussion groups to get their teeth into) here. This is contemporary fiction at its best.

[David Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story but didn’t capture me went on a bit in some of the interactions and details but still at the end had some poignancy to it which stuck a chord

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst not quite a thriller, this is still a decent literary drama whose central premise - a young man called Sam turns up at Dominic's successful design shop with a doctored birth certificate claiming to be the product of an affair Dominic had with Sam's mother nearly thirty years ago - keeps the reader guessing and is given added suspense by the question of whether Dominic's wife will find out. If the story is the stuff of soap opera, then Buckley elevates it with well-developed characters, believable dialogue and a lack of melodrama in even the most charged scenes.
This is a novel I've had on my shelves for a few years now, having previously enjoyed two of the author's earlier books (Invisible and So He Takes The Dog). Alas, I wish I had read it then instead of letting it languish, as in the intervening years I have also read Buckley's two most recent novels, Nostalgia and The river is the river which have seen him take his writing to a whole new level, such that each of those books were to my mind among the best British fiction published in their respective years. By comparison 'Contact' feels almost pedestrian.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

just read a review in the Guardian, sounds good...

..maybe not quite as good as the review led me to believe (imo) but nevertheless a strong, tight 'thriller', despite a couple of loose ends and an ambiguous ending. I enjoyed it, but the story was very familiar - a violent ex squaddie working class lad presents himself to a smug-ish middle class businessman as his son, the product of an affair. When the 'father' questions this the 'lad' (he's about 30) turns angry and stalks and intimidates him (eg sends him photos of violent things he's seen in Iraq, 'stuff they don't show you on the news' - pretty horrific), gets into the house as a roofer/odd job man (by cold calling on the man's wife) and generally ruins his life. Themes of indentity, memory, class are well handled. Someone said a bit like Ian McEwan's 'Enduring Love' and it is, but McEwan's tale is even tighter and more tense.
There are a couple of typos (steps become stamps at one point), but that didn't spoil my enjoyment.

[Patrick Neylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's easier to criticise 'Contact' than to praise it, but that doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's a decent read, with a fascinating premise and a brilliantly created character in Sam, the former soldier who contacts businessman Dominic claiming to be his son.

In Sam, author Jonathan Buckley has created a character of mystery and menace, yet with a great deal of sympathy too. His cat-and-mouse game with Dominic drives the narrative along, but even his energy is not enough to haul the story forwards at a quick enough pace, dragged down as it is by the ponderous dullness of Dominic and the bland, workmanlike prose of Buckley.

The author tries to make the writing style reflect Dominic's comfortable, mundane existence but in doing so he robs it of any flair. And the lack of resolution at the end means that the book peters out while the reader waits for a twist that never comes.

I'd still recommend it as a psychological thriller, but I just wouldn't recommend it too highly.