A Landing on the Sun - Michael Frayn (1991)

 

Rating: Excellent

This rather intriguing looking novel was gifted to me by my brother Barry, about twenty or more years ago for Christmas, and, of course, I have only just got around to reading it, which is all too typical of me. So, who is Michael Frayn? Frayn is an English novelist and playwright, as well as a reporter and columnist and A Landing on the Sun was the winner of the Sunday Express book of the year, which was quite a significant award at the time. The novel is certainly a fine piece of work. Frayn’s style is spare and restrained, nicely mirroring the civil service approach of main protagonist Brian Jessel, as he undertakes an investigation into the mysterious death of fellow civil servant Stephen Summerchild, who fell to his death from the Admiralty building. Set in the early seventies, the novel exudes old school public service sensibilities, something I appreciate, being a public servant myself. Jessel is a fantastic creation, a public servant through and through, following proper procedure, grimacing through his beard at the improprieties of both Summerchild and his colleague, academic (a philosopher) Elizabeth Serafin, as they undertake an investigation into ‘quality of life’, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. Summerchild and Serafin are a ‘strategy unit’, holed up in an obscure turret within the Admiralty building. Their very existence, let alone their subsequent philosophical investigations into the nature of happiness, represents an all too ironically funny and satirical skewering of bureaucracy.

Michael Frayn, contemplating civil service beards.

Jessel’s investigations into the events some fifteen years ago reads like a police procedural. Jessel reads their clumsy attempts at reports and listens to recordings of their discussions, slowly putting together the events leading to Summerchild’s eventual death. Jessel essentially relives their lives, following in their footsteps, sitting with pictures of them in the turret and in doing so reveals some aspects of his own life that set up intriguing insights into his own character, history and past connections with Summerchild. Without wasting a word Frayn develops a narrative that is various shades of melancholy, suffering, hope, regret, humour, with glimpses of happiness and optimism. A Landing on the Sun is unlike any other novel I’ve read previously, I’m not even sure who I could compare Frayn to, perhaps he exists in his own literary realm. It’s a beautiful book and very English, with a great London atmosphere of old buildings and laneways of dappled early evening light. Some readers may find the novel boring, but it is anything but, rather it rewards your attention and draws you into a very singular world. It’s difficult to say much more about it without giving away too much, except that, from the evidence of A Landing on the Sun, Frayn is a special and classy writer who, in his nineties, is still publishing work, the most recent being a memoir (Among Others: Friendships and Encounters (2023)). The novel was adapted by the author for a TV movie in 1994 that has a IMDB rating of 8.2 – worth a viewing then, if only to see the rarified world of the British civil service on the screen, with a frowning Jessel stoking his beard, which presents almost as a character in its own right in the novel. In fact his beard should have had its own spin-off novel, or at least a TV series of its own, now I'd like to see that.