It is also interesting from a writing technique perspective. Cooper ignores the 'show don't tell' advice for the entire novel, recounting all the events without a single instance of live dialogue. And yet, it was still engaging, and I felt I could easily picture myself in the moment with Brian, and live all the episodes with him. As have the two previous novels from Jeremy Cooper, Ash Before Oak and Bolt from the Blue, which contained a lot of nature and modern art respectively but which failed, unlike works from authors such as Sara Baume and the hybrid art/novel works that are a trademark of Les Fugitives, to draw this reader in and makes me want to seek out the things referenced. And Brian does the same, or rather fails to do the same, with film. There is an oddly detached tone to the novel which is narrated in the third person, almost like character notes for someone playing Brian in a movie, or the interview notes of a psychologist (although the only time Brian does seek help his GP tells him the NHS no longer funds such things): After having published his luminous Ash Before Oak, Jeremy Cooper now brings us Brian, equally a work of mysterious interiority and poetry. It confirms that however solitary life might be, art enriches both our imaginations and our realities. This is a very tender book.’

Brian by Jeremy Cooper — solace in cinema in London - Financial Times Brian by Jeremy Cooper — solace in cinema in London - Financial

On paper this shouldn’t really work. A narrative about an introverted loner with a deeply unhappy childhood working in a mind numbing clerical job who finds salvation through watching films. More specifically, watching films every night at the National Film Theatre and becoming part of a group of others who also attend frequently who appear united at least initially less through their love of film but more by the fact they appear socially marginalised. I would say that at least half of the content of the short book is dedicated to film. It’s as if Cooper had amassed similarly voluminous notes to his main character having attended the NFT with similar devotion and wondered if he somehow couldn’t make a book about them. That doesn’t sound promising I know. If you combine that with the affectless written style, which particularly accents Brian’s idiosyncrasies (the tone is almost one of a book written for children about an unhappy mouse) you would think that potentially this book does not have much going for it. With an effort he managed to clear his head of unwanted family memories and continued on into Kentish Town Road. This is the 60th of the blue-covered fiction titles from Fitzcarraldo Editions, all of which I've read and reviewed, but it sadly confirmed my hypothesis: their taste and mine in Anglophone male writers simply doesn't overlap. It was excellent, not in the least bit disappointing, stuffed with tenderness and vengeance. Eastwood, who directed as well as starred, spent much of the film in the saddle and for this feat of skill and endurance promptly became Brian’s movie idol. For other reasons too: the lyricism of the Texan landscape through which Josey Wales pursued without mercy the Unionist guerrillas, killers of his wife and children; and for the depiction of peasant farmers of Missouri as people with hopes and pain.This morning I woke up to terror such as I have never experienced before: I was entirely stripped of feeling. I was completely empty, without pain, without pleasure, without longing, without love, without warmth and friendship, without anger, without hate. Nothing, nothing was there anymore, leaving me like a suit of armour with no knight inside. Brian aims to be seen as “true” in two divergent ways, in the convincing depiction of an obsessive central character and in acceptable portrayal of actual films and other public events. The novel assumes overlapping areas of unity between fact and fiction, for even in the driest documentary re-telling of an historical episode choices are made—in the language of description, in what to leave out, in presentational design, and as to which external experts to trust on disputed issues. There is inevitably an element of fiction in all factual writing, because the taste and judgement of an individual has informed its composition. In reverse, almost all fiction has a factual core, colored by the life of its writer, by the people they have come across, and by the underlying emotional tenor of the author’s interests. Whether by intention or not, a novel in part documents its writer, at times with the deliberate contradiction of openness versus restraint and verbal shimmer against solid realism. Readers, too, discover a lot about films and filmmakers, about the joys and insights they bring to viewers’ lives, and how, but extension, the arts help people develop rewarding inner lives, even—and especially—for people like Brian. Perhaps the format of the novel Brian is author Jeremy Cooper’s own tip of the hat to Brian’s special appreciation of glacially paced Japanese films in which nothing much happens on the outside, but inside, the characters’ lives are tumultuous yet measured. By the novel’s end—40 years of Brian’s life have been covered—he finally works up the nerve to reciprocate an offered friendship. Anonymously, of course. So as not to draw attention to himself.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper The quiet joy of a deep interest: Brian by Jeremy Cooper

There’s a strange magic to Jeremy Cooper’s writing. The way he puts words together creates an incantatory effect. Reading him is to be spellbound, then. I have no idea how he does it, only that I am seduced.’ I feel like I should have liked this book more. I feel like I was the target audience for it, but it just didn't work for me. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? A study in how writing can give lives meaning, and in how it can fail to be enough to keep one afloat, this is a rare, delicate book, teeming with the stuff of real life.’

But this book just didn't work for me. It felt more like reading a never ending cinema programme than a novel. But there's no explanation about any of the films, just the briefest of nods towards them. So even though I'd seen dozens of the films in the book and could often decipher what the author was alluding to, even that didn't really help. God forbid you've not got an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.