All That Man Is by David Szalay review tales of love and money

David Szalay is known as an emptier of hidden pockets of English life: his previous novels have explored telesales (London and the South-East) and horse-racing tips (Spring). Like its predecessors, his new book is populated by small men with oversized ambitions (one is even a refugee from London and the South-East) and illuminates some interestingly shady worlds (prostitution in London’s glitzy hotels; bargain-basement tourism in Cyprus). But in two key respects it marks a departure: it’s more short story collection than novel (despite being marketed as the latter), and its lens is pan-European rather than narrowly English.

Each of the book’s nine sections focuses on a different stage of “man’s” life: we begin with a high-minded 17-year-old flitting across eastern Europe with a school friend, and end with a 73-year-old ex-government adviser coming to terms with his diminishing faculties. In between, we encounter – among others – an unexpectedly nice tabloid journalist, a self-serving academic and a suicidal billionaire. While the stories all relate to England in some way, they all also involve continental travel, and several of the protagonists are European. So extensive is the Channel-hopping, in fact, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that Szalay was advancing an argument on behalf of the Remain campaign, about the interconnectedness of Britain and Europe.

Yet his true concerns, one suspects, err more towards the philosophical. As the title (taken from Yeats’s Byzantium) implies, this book aims to be a reckoning with “all that man is”. And here, it has to be said, Szalay’s verdict is depressing. Far from celebrating’s man’s infinite variety, the book reveals his endless repetitiveness. The characters we encounter, no matter how ostensibly different, are all caught up in the same narrow set of concerns, chief among which are love and money (or variations thereof). They’re all fundamentally lonely, and have a tendency to drift, in mild befuddlement, through life. For the suicidal billionaire this is literally the case: his story takes place aboard his luxury yacht.

Yet downbeat though they mostly are, these portraits are by no means unsympathetic. One of Szalay’s strengths is that he is able to reveal his character’s limitations – and, quite often, their absurdities — without mocking them. In this, he compares favourably with, say, Martin Amis (with whom he has a few things in common), whose satire is often so merciless it verges on a sneer. Szalay, on the other hand, is capable of conjuring tenderness from any situation. One example is the Cyprus story, in which a young Frenchman is seduced – successively – by two extremely fat English tourists, a mother and daughter. It sounds remarkably unpromising – like some atrocious Tom Sharpe farce – yet it proves a triumph, because Szalay keeps the writing so judgment-free and is so honest about the unpredictability of desire.

There are plenty of other gems, including a very touching story about a bodyguard’s secret love for the prostitute he’s minding, and a sharp, Borgen-esque tale of Danish political intrigue. But does it in any sense work, as Jonathan Cape wants us to believe, as a novel? Yes, there’s a thematic consistency that makes this more than a collection, and Szalay even throws in the odd narrative link (the 73-year-old, it transpires, is the 17-year-old’s granddad). But still, a novel? I don’t think so. As long as readers don’t feel cheated, they will find a great deal to enjoy in these pages, and further evidence that Szalay – who was named a Granta best young novelist in 2013 – is one of the best fortysomething writers we have.

All That Man Is is published by Vintage (£14.99). Click here to order a copy for £11.99

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