Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of the English Language, defined “novel” as “a small tale, generally of love”. The Irish writer Andrew Meehan would probably agree. His social media profile says he “writes about love. That’s about the size of it.” Meehan is the author of three previous novels about love, including love across national borders and the love between Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance. With his new novel, Best Friends, he’s gone geriatric: it’s a sort of Normal People for pensioners.
The pensioners are the Dubliners Ray Draper, 70, and June Wylie, 74. As soon as they are introduced, we can tell this is a book with character and individuality. June “once had herself down for Chrissie Hynde, but punks get old”. Now, she thinks, “she’s the grass that needs cutting. She’s yesterday’s eyeliner today.” When we meet her, she’s calling round the posh houses of Dublin (driveways lined with “gravel like something you’d put on ice-cream”), asking for empty jam jars to store the honey made by her beloved bees.
Ray is a more diffident character generally. When we meet him he is struggling to get a GP appointment (“He doesn’t want to be rude, but Ray is one of their best patients”) and wondering what to do with his day. He “considers a run through the yellow stickers in M&S”. He was once a monk, once a tree surgeon (“thirty years of having your breakfast in a garage forecourt” with a “lingering air of old spaniel [and] a City and Guilds in pulling out bushes”) and has never had sex. He’s been the sort of man to whom women say, “You’re a lovely man, do you know that?” and he was about to propose to a woman once, but “the look in her eyes said she was going to say no”.
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Two isolated individuals; two of millions. They are at once ordinary and unique, and are examples of the hidden stories of every person we pass in the street. “You’d hardly notice they were there.” Looking at June, nobody would think she “smokes three rollies a day, in a breakfast, lunch and dinner arrangement”, or that she ditched her third husband because he was “sleeping with a ‘fascinating’ woman who, according to the directory in his phone, went by the name of Wendy Tits”.
All these quirky details are so delightful that Best Friends would be a joy to read even if Ray and June didn’t meet up and fall for each other — but they do. They meet when June is being told by the Asian supermarket that her honey is being discontinued, whereupon Ray gallantly steps up and buys it all.
And they’re off — too old for prevaricating or dancing round politely. “What do you want out of this situation?” June asks Ray, and soon he’s “coming for lunch, with the possibility of dinner, and with the possibility of etc”. But despite the sweetness of all the things I’ve mentioned — supported by the twee-ish title and cover — Best Friends is also a quietly subversive book. It’s full of whimsical details and philosophical digressions, and it plays with our expectations. “Why does a kiss in the rain always signal the end of a story?” it asks when there’s still half the book to go.
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But mostly this is a novel of reliable pleasures as we watch June and Ray get used to one another, fitting themselves into the long-established routine of one another’s lives. “You don’t have to stop singing when I come into the room,” she tells him. There are strong set pieces when they first sleep together (which starts out as a nap after lunch) – “one or two of June’s bees have popped in […] not finding much of interest” — and a holiday in Venice that provides the novel’s darkest and most shocking moments.
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There aren’t many shocking moments otherwise; mostly, Best Friends is about pleasant surprises. The biggest surprise of all is that Andrew Meehan isn’t better known. This gentle, off-kilter book, perfectly pitched to be a word-of-mouth summer hit, should change all that.
Best Friends by Andrew Meehan, Muswell Press £12.99 pp208. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
