Stump By Niall Griffiths

A dry tale from the Poet Laureate of substance abuse

Niall Griffiths's fourth novel announces a distinct change of narrative mode. The epic excesses that characterised his past work are gone, replaced by a sparser, sparer style that is altogether gentler in tone, more reflective in mood. It marks a return to form after the disappointment of his third book, the misjudged Kelly + Victor, but it also demonstrates a widening of thematic concern and sympathy. For the first time, a Griffiths novel features a lead character whose ruling ethos is no longer simply to say yes to another excess.

Set, like his first two works, in Aberystwyth, Stump focuses on a day in the life of its protagonist, a recovering alcoholic who has lost his left arm to gangrene. His routine is straightforward: he gets out of bed, visits a friend, goes to the doctor, signs on, shops, sits in a café, walks home. Meanwhile, in chapters that intersperse those which document his day, nemesis approaches in the form of two minor gangsters who have set out from Liverpool on a mission to find and punish him for a past misdemeanour. As they draw near their prey, the threat of violence gathers ominously.

Along with Irvine Welsh, Griffiths has, in recent years, vied for the title of the Poet Laureate of substance abuse, but his latest work is remarkable in that it is intoxicant-free: no character snorts, drinks or injects during the course of the whole narrative. The memory of past addictions, however, haunts the protagonist vividly. Griffiths captures superbly the intensities and frustrations that buzz crazily around the mind of the recovering alcoholic. Passing a pub in the town centre, for instance, sets off a bout of longing that the writer depicts brilliantly, from the temptation that is sparked by the golden light illuminating a glass of beer, to the wretched sense of withdrawal provoked by the stale pub smell of ale and tobacco. In fact, the chapters that depict the bereft inner life of the maimed central character are wholly convincing, from the tedium he suffers having to perform everyday tasks with only one arm, to his hopeless obsession with a sordid and intoxicated past he has no choice but to leave behind.

Less successful are the chapters that feature the gangsters come to punish him. This is not through any failure of the writing (Griffiths has a real ear for the twists and turns of Scouse dialogue, and he deploys his talents to telling and often comic effect), but rather because the writer has less material to work with. Once he's established these two as feeble-minded though vicious predators, he has little more to say. If there's a flaw with the novel, it's that these sections are a little drawn out, and the pace of the narrative lags a bit as their journey draws to its end. But these are minor drawbacks. With Stump, Griffiths has produced a vivid evocation of the tortuous process of recovery, and the furies - both inner and outer - that inevitably must pursue the former addict. Compared to his past efforts, it is a slimmed down, close-focus work that swaps breadth of scale for intensity of focus, and, for me at least, in the precision of its gaze and the certainty of its depiction, makes for his most economic and effective piece of fiction.