It’s What He Would’ve Wanted: A Novel by Sean Hughes
If jokes about suicide make you chuckle, then you might enjoy IT’S WHAT HE WOULD’VE WANTED by Sean Hughes. It’s very dark, set in London, and not for the squeamish or demure.
Sean Hughes is billed on the back flap as a famous humorous writer. I’ve never heard of him, but he is funny. At several places in this novel, I laughed out loud, despite it not being an appropriate place for laughter (and then had to hedge, because I didn’t feel comfortable describing what was so funny.) Hughes’ humor kind of smacks you off guard.
Hughes sets the novel in London, with a brief foray to Western Ireland and Australia, and I feel like there were some jokes I didn’t quite get because of an infamiliarity with the culture. For example, the protagonist says he’s named “Shea Hickson” and laughs/winces that it’s a horrid name, and obviously supposed to be an Irish version of “Che Guevara.” I still don’t get it. There were other slang terms I didn’t get, some of which I figured out from context, others of which remained a mystery to me. I don’t necessarily say this is a mark against this book, just an observation.
When I say this book isn’t for the demure or squemish, it’s on account of the main character, Shea. He’s loathesome. Imagine if Beavus and Butthead grew older without growing up, and exchanged their youthful enthusiasm for middle-aged existential doubt. Shea hates having a job, misses his brother, and loves blow-jobs. That’s what he’s about. He also loves his brother’s wife, but she only loves her husband. When his father kills himself on Christmas, the tragedy ball really gets rolling.
Shea sets about to decode his late father’s journal and figure out why his dad killed himself. His dad has weather-related code words (he was a weatherman) for different people. As we find out about Shea’s dad’s sordid past and Shea’s sordid present, the frail structure of his family falls further apart. Shea may be a feckless, good for nothing man-whore, but his dad was even worse, and now it looks like Shea’s brother is trying to live down to his dad’s example.
One thing that I disliked, although it was fairly central to the plot, is that Shea is involved in a clandestine nameless organization. I disliked this because Shea talks frequently about how much he doesn’t like working, and in every other aspect of his life, he also walks the “not working” walk. So having him do volunteer work for someone seemed out of character. He says he joined the organization because it was at direct odds with everything his own father believed in, but I never got a clear handle on what those beliefs were. How is robbing from the rich and giving to the poor at odds with fighting global warming? It could be this is another cultural miscue.
I really disliked the main character. At one point he was contemplating suicide, and I kind of hoped he’d do it. He’s just icky; the kind of man whose existence makes me hope my daughters become lesbians. A hooker with a heart of gold manages to see some good in him, but no one else does, and I can’t really blame them. I also disliked the slow pacing. At times, it reminded me of one of those cosy seaside books, where the characters go to some pleasant place and do meaningless activities before they fall gently in love. Only in this book, instead of buying ice cream and visiting the botanical gardens, he buys cheap suits and shacks up with hookers. Readers who spent their youth hip-deep in debauchery may find him more sympathetic.
I recommend this for people who like grim, dark novels, laced with black humor. I also recommend it for people who like Warren Ellis, because it has a similar Hell-in-a-handbasket feel to it. It’s funny, but it’s also graphic and crass, and it made me depressed at the end.
