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'The Unitary Authority Of Ersatz'

You know when you are sitting there typing away at your new book and suddenly a million tons of waterfall cascade all over you and sweep you away, and there is nothing you can do to resist as you tumble mid-air among all those words and ideas, but you know that when you hit the pool  at the bottom, and should you survive, you will be handed a tick-box questionnaire by the publisher which asks you which categories your book fits into, and you cannot find ‘Alien Metaphysics’, or ‘Surreal Diagnostics‘ or even ‘Magical-Realism’ which is a recognised category but not by online book retailers.

Having worked in Waterstones in Hull for many years, Rich Sutherland must have known what was coming his way but his muse was blinding him, I am thoroughly delighted to say. A word of advice, Rich, as if you needed it, go for ‘Crime’, ‘Romance’, ‘Non-Fiction’ and ‘Domestic Pets’. While they may not be remotely relevant to your impressive output, they are the most popular categories and the worst you will get is a disappointed reader complaining “This isn’t at all like the last Agatha Christie I read.”

Which it isn’t. It isn’t even like the one before that. It isn’t like much really. To interpose myself for a second here, when I published ‘The Blue Food Revolution’ earlier this year, the first crit back said “I read it first for pleasure; now I am going to re-read it to try to understand it” (that technique is called ‘roaching’, by the way – using somebody else’s gig to promote your own product. What can I say? I started out fearless and have ended up shameless). Anyway, “I read it first for pleasure; now I am going to re-read it to try to understand it” is certainly true of my experience with ‘The Unitary Authority Of Ersatz’. I was grinning from ear to ear with the sheer surface refraction of the words, the ripples of humour, the insistent underlying playfulness. As I read it, I realised that there was a great deal more happening below that glittering surface but, for the time-being, that surface alone was enough to brighten my day. It was a bit as the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (son of Beechams Powders) once observed “The English do not much care for music, but they love the sound it makes”. I was loving the sound Rich’s words were making regardless of whether I cared for what he was actually saying or not.

I don’t expect that anybody will ever fully understand what Rich has written here, maybe not even Rich himself, because this book is not limited to surface gloss by any means. It delivers a steady stream of sharp observations, each story being told in a different rhythm and style, before giving way to drama then poetry as alternative viable life forms in the City of Ersatz.

While a brief run of the stories languishing halfway through prove somewhat less cloaked as to their implications – radiating wider resonances nonetheless - the vast majority are challengingly complex and multi-layered. I will highlight two of these and suggest that you explore the rest on your own as homework.

‘Special Delivery’ is about our expectation of perfection, nay our requirement that we achieve and obtain it. A hundred years ago, we felt ourselves blessed if there was enough food in the cupboard to feed us that day and if none of our children had been murdered that morning by a plague or by a war. Now we demand everything, a perfect home, a perfect wife, a perfect job, a perfect life, a perfect car, a perfect grasp of who we are (to borrow and adapt the lyrics from legendary Hull singer-songwriter Joe Solo’s ‘Nothing’s Perfect’). The Rackhams have everything – perfect taste, perfect characters, perfect friends in addition to the other elements of Joe’s list – except for one thing. They have never managed to conceive any baby at all, never mind a perfect one. This lack becomes increasingly corrosive to their lifestyle and relationship as all the medical tests suggest that there is no reason for this painful omission and the Rackhams sink into ever-deeper despair until, one day, a strange little man arrives to tell them that if they each give him some hair and nail clippings he knows a genius of a doctor who will grow them a new baby out of their combined DNA. With nothing to lose they comply, but hope turns to devastation as the wait for the baby becomes extended.

In ‘An Evening At Maths Manor’, Rich uses mathematical functions as stimuli to explore the different characters in attendance at a party. For instance, the Multiplys quickly go forth to search for a dark and secluded room, Master Radius turns out to be well known in many circles, and that brat Isosceles Triangle is decidedly unbalanced. Naturally, Ms. Infinity simply prattles on and on. And, as with all the best shaggy dogmas, this tale finishes up with a resounding Basil Brush Boom! Boom! punchline.

Which are my favourite tales? Dunno. I liked some of the poems too. Maybe ‘Baking Day’ which nods towards Roald Dahl.

You have to buy this book, not only because it is ragbag of surprise and pleasure, but also to help make Rich, well, rich. For my part, I have read it first in its electronic pre-release format, now I am going off to buy it for real. I want to have it adorning my bookcase to declare what a well-read and discerning chappy I am. After a while, I will discreetly drop it into my time capsule to make sure that it survives the end of the world as we know it in 2012, along with works of those other great modern Hull writers Nick Quantrill, Danny Birch, Daphne Glazer and Steven Hall. Come to think of it, it should particularly enjoy snuggling up to Steven Hall’s equally zany ‘The Raw Shark Texts’, although the Ludovician contained within the latter may consider it somewhat dilettante and fragmented for its single-minded and voracious purpose.

Spectacular, Rich. As Mark Twain (I believe) said “Any idiot can write a book but it takes genius to sell it.” No kind of idiot could have written this book and I’d lay a small bet that Rich can sell it too. (TR).