First of all, In the Approaches is a very strange novel. Secondly, only an English author could write such a novel. In the Approaches is a multifaceted beast, a romantic comedy, of sorts, a surreal tale of eccentric characters being very odd in the English country-side in the 1980s, a metafictional narrative, a rumination on faith and, also, terribly chaffed and inflamed buttocks (yes, you read that correctly). The narrative unfolds in alternating first person chapters, mostly swinging between the two main protagonists, Franklin D. Huff and Carla Hahn. Hahn is a resident of the sea-side village of Pett Level in the UK and Huff is a visitor, on a quest to try and discover what happened many years prior when his wife lived and worked there, before she was horrifically burnt in a bomb blast. Stylistically it is a difficult novel to get used to, Barker loves to leave sentences unfinished, the thoughts of the characters are left there hanging as they try and make sense of the situation and how they feel about it all. She also loves parentheses (apparently this is a hallmark of Barker's writing), so much so it is made fun of throughout the novel, particularly by one of the minor characters, Clifford Bickerton. Bickerton is a thoroughly post-modern character, complaining about having to be part of the story, raging against the author (referred to as 'she') and undergoing an existential crisis due to his self awareness about just being a minor character in a novel. At one point printed words stream out of his mouth as he has a breakdown, trying to deal with the awfulness of it all. It is, in actual fact, all quite entertaining.
Once I got used to Barker's idiosyncratic style and settled into the characters and the story-arc, In the Approaches shaped up to be a satisfying read. The characters are potentially irritating, in particular Franklin D. Huff, but Barker manages to make them endearing and their continued perplexed state of being becomes a plus, rather than a minus. Just how Barker manages to do this is somewhat of a mystery, as the seperate ingredients seem like a recipe for irritation, rather than satisfaction. Perhaps it's Carla Hahn's propensity to continually flick her hair behind her ear with her hand, or her tendency to take no heed of feminine gender norms. Perhaps it's the chapters entirely given over to a parrot called Baldo (or is that Teobaldo?) who shrieks and scratches its way through what seem like entirely too long chapters (yet somehow, in the end this works). Or perhaps it's the mystery of the thalidomide child, Orla, who became saint-like in her obsession with Christianity before her death and who went on to influence proceedings in gnostic ways that perplex many of the characters who inhabit In the Approaches. Perhaps it is the romantic pull and push between Huff and Hahn, which involves a dead and rotting shark under a bed, a tiny sauna perched on a clifftop about to fall into the sea, and the strange smell of eucalyptus that surrounds them both. Intrigued? Then maybe this is the novel for you. The novel's denouement is oblique and perhaps a tad disappointing because of it, but then Barker is not a typical author prone to cliches used to wrap things up neatly, after all, the novel is aptly named, as in the end, the reader, like the characters who populate the novel, is also trapped in the approaches.
