'Truth' by Peter Temple
‘Truth’ by Peter Temple is the sequel to the book ‘The broken shore’. Eager to read it, I anticipated a challenge. Yet, after reading 200 of the 400 page book, I gave up.
Why? As in ‘The broken shore’ there are nuggets of writerly delights. Side characters are described in a few scathing words ‘Mrs Deslisle gave him the eye, handsome in a Botoxed stringy gymrat way.’ Some statements in incomplete sentences. Unexpected comparisons: describing two white middle aged men, one a returned Vietnam soldier, the other a successful surgeon: ‘Right from the handshake Bob Villani and David seemed to have some joke going. Perhaps they recognised each other as born killers.’
As expected I struggled with not knowing what was going on. Nor does the main character, a cop trying to find the truth, and connection, between rather grim murders.
There’s not a single likeable character in the entire book. Cashin, main character in the previous novel, is now a barely mentioned side character. Villani, elevated from side to main character, is a faulty hero. A cop who is driven, but not only by the ‘need to know’, the search for the truth as the title might suggest, but just as much by the opportunity his work provides to avoid dealing with challenges in his personal life.
The book is void of empathy, characters are judgmental and fraught, the political and day-to-day reality plain awful. Lots of dialogue, most of it incomprehensible.
When I pick up the book and dip into it I find bite sized treats. In bits of dialogue:
‘Well, I thought I was a bit teenagey the other night. Perhaps less mature than a person like myself should be.’
‘Maturity’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
In snippets of character:
‘Sleep gone, a new day but the old day in his mouth – old day, old week, month, year, life. A middle-aged man with no address, his possessions in the boot of his car.
I find more – individual scenes that delight. The description of his Villani’s affair with Anna – the dialogue is captivating; Villani asking for truth ‘As a cop,’ he said, ‘I have a need to know.’ Yet, he does not provide his part of what she might ‘need to know’, assuming that his honesty will evoke a response he doesn’t like.
No. I won’t return to reading the book. I’m not interested: How does it end? Who murdered who? Who is the mole in the police force? Is it a mole, or an active perpetrator? I don’t care about any of the characters, and maybe I’m wilfully blind, but I don’t want to inhabit a world as corrupt, as horrible, as mean, as sexist, racist, traumatised. I learned something new – to enjoy a book it needs to include at least one character I like, at least some of the time, in all their flawed humanity.