Beer & Book Club

The Beer and book club

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins

The last two meetings of The BBC have taken place at The Flute & Firkin, and most pleasant they have been too. This month’s book was written by George V Higgins, who was assistant District Attorney in Boston before becoming a defence attorney and then a full-time writer. Described as ‘the poet of Boston sleaze’ he wrote over thirty books, this being his first. His others include a handful of ‘lowlife masterpieces’ constructed almost entirely of what has been described as ‘pitchperfect’ dialogue.

It is this dialogue which helped most of us race through the book at top speed, the outcome being that most of us viewed the book with both enjoyment and admiration.

The pattern of the book does take a little bit of getting used to, in that each chapter begins in a different place and usually with a different set of characters. This can sometimes make it quite difficult to follow.

As the piece wears on, however, we begin to work out how the characters relate to one another. We also get more drawn into this tight-knit world in which everyone seems to understand the rules of engagement, whether they’re a criminal, a barman, a policeman or a lawyer.

Reading the book can at times feel like reading a screenplay and this is testament to how the author brings his characters to life through the way they talk and the things they do. That said, there is not much depth to the characterisation and descriptions of people can be as minimal as ‘he was stocky’.

Although there are violent scenes in the book, they are described in an ordinary way. Again, it feels just a natural part of how the people in the book operate both individually and as a group.

Our Scottish contributor summed up the views of many in our group, describing the style as ‘economical but slick’, ‘drab and dreary but in a good way’, and ‘flat but underpinned by menace’.

A few comparisons were made during our discussion of the novel. Some talked of The Godfather and Goodfellas, one or two of Hill Street Blues and the works of Tarantino. But many of us agreed that this was something quite different to a lot of what we’d read previously, especially in its masterly use of dialogue.

The lack of pretence was another key aspect of the book for our group. The characters played their parts in what felt like a totally realistic manner. They themselves seemed under no illusions about who they were and the roles they played in this ‘interesting’ society. Everyone, it seemed, was living on the edge; the edge of criminality for some, the edge of life and death for others.