Funny Girl review – Nick Hornby’s tribute to the golden age of light entertainment
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Version 0 of 1. Nick Hornby’s seventh novel (and 13th book) opens in Blackpool in 1964, the year after Philip Larkin’s Annus Mirabilis – “Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban/ And the Beatles’ first LP.” It is, I suppose, historical fiction, although it seems strange that we don’t have a formal term for a novel like this, which operates in a realm of the past that is both strikingly distant from the present moment and yet within living memory. There is something very different in writing characters who are able to appear, arthritic and curmudgeonly, in present-day Eastbourne in a chapter at the end of the novel to, for instance, the literary time travel we get in Wolf Hall or The Blue Flower. Funny Girl carries about it a particular nostalgic glow that, I think, comes from Hornby viewing the 60s through the misty eyes of his aged, present-day protagonists. The novel follows the life of Barbara Parker, briefly the winner of Miss Blackpool 1964 (she returns the award as it would mean staying in her hometown for a year of ribbon-cutting). Barbara, who dreams of stardom and idolises Lucille Ball, moves to London, changes her name to Sophie Straw, and with little effort scores herself a role as the star of the television sitcom Barbara (and Jim). In the face of mild BBC disapproval, Sophie steals the show, charming her scriptwriters, directors and her smarmy co-star, Clive, with her busty good looks and impeccable comic timing. There is a reason why comedians feature so rarely in novels: what is funny in a book is rather different to what is funny on stage or screen. Hornby is a good comic writer, but wisely avoids giving us too much of the material Sophie delivers as she rises to stardom. Where it is there, the jokes are often deployed with little exculpations – “It wasn’t the best line, but she delivered it with a completely straight face, and she got a bigger laugh than she deserved.” Or, elsewhere, “It had been a half-decent performance, she thought, considering the thinness of the material.” Funny Girl is a paean to the golden age of light entertainment, when Lucille Ball brought honest, predictable humour into the homes of the many millions who’d bought televisions in the late 50s and early 60s and Alf Garnett was a staple of BBC programming. Initially, and aided by a selection of strange, Sebaldian photographs inserted into the text, we get the impression that Hornby is presenting a broadly factual past, with Sophie as his fictional envoy. We are presented with newspaper reviews of Barbara (and Jim), pages from scripts, a signed copy of the programme’s final stage notes. It is soon clear, though, that Hornby’s project can’t afford to be tainted by too much reality, and while historical figures occasionally rear their heads (Sophie is invited to tea with Harold Wilson, for instance), this is no exercise in exploring the fact/fiction divide. What it is instead is a defence of the merely entertaining. One of the very few villains in the novel is a snobbish critic for the Third Programme called Vernon Whitfield. Whitfield has stolen the wife of the director of Barbara (and Jim) and is now a vituperative critic of the BBC’s light entertainment in general and Barbara (and Jim) in particular. “Ordinary people en masse trouble me,” he says. “They seem to lose the ability to think. And I’m sorry that the BBC, of all organisations, feels the need to talk down to them.” Hornby’s (pyrrhic) defence of these programmes (and, by extension, the kind of literary light entertainment that Hornby himself writes) is voiced by one of Barbara (and Jim)’s co-writers later on in the book: “That’s the thing about television comedy, isn’t it? It makes us all part of something. That’s what I love about it. You laugh at the same thing as your boss and your mum and your next-door neighbour and the television critic of The Times and the Queen for all I know. It’s brilliant.” Hornby has had significant success as a screenwriter (he adapted An Education) and there are several points in Funny Girl where it feels like it is a film in waiting, eager to shrug off the formal constraints of the novel. Some passages read like they’ve been lifted straight from Robert McKee’s screenwriting bible, Story: “[Blackpool] suddenly seemed like the only place in the world where she could understand the length of the journey she had taken.” And yet, as the book progresses, we realise that Hornby’s aim is more sophisticated and interesting than merely teeing up another silver-screen smash. The book is attempting to mirror the tone and style of the television era to which it pays tribute, so where we might expect high drama and heartbreak, we get instead cosy comedy and easily resolved misunderstandings. The novel is resolutely, winningly light-hearted until the final chapter, when age and illness have taken their toll, and it builds to a fine and moving finale. Funny Girl is published by Viking (£18.99). Click here to buy it for £14.99 |