Armadillo
William Boyd
Hamish Hamilton, hbk, 310pp
Reviewed by Gerald Houghton (1998)

William Boyd isn't a literary writer. Not the literary writers' literary writer, if you see what I mean. His days of being mentioned in Booker dispatches are long gone; he's entered a curious netherworld as that rarest of birds: a serious writer who is read.

Not for his plots, you understand. Leastways, not in this case; Armadillo is long on things happening, but not weighed down by anything so cumbersome as a plot. Even the few strings that pull together into a loose - very loose - thriller never amount to much so far as motivation. There is certainly no tension or menace; even when things turn nasty, they turn nasty in a very English way. But Boyd, an exceptional writer of short stories (the On The Yankee Station and Destiny of Natalie X collections), always seems to founder slightly when called upon to extend himself.

Lorimer Black is a loss adjuster. That is, his job is to try and cut on the insurance pay-outs his employers have to fork up for major claims, like a cancelled rock tour or, fatally for Lorimer, the burning of a half-finished hotel. He's surrounded by wildly named, wildly acting colleagues, friends and family who, whatever the emotional armour Lorimer dons, seem time and again to be conspiring against his self-protection.

No prizes for spotting Boyd's ten-foot neon symbolism, from the title through Lorimer's half-passion for collecting antique helmets, to the heavy baggage of a semi-denied past. (Real name Milo Blocj, from Hungarian gypsy stock.) 'Armadillo', the book explains up front, means 'little armed man.' Boyd claims to have been intrigued by hearing about these 'guys with their suitcases full of pound notes,' and, fair dues, he plays the idea for big stakes, but just can't make it sing like film-maker Atom Egoyan in his subtle, masterly, The Adjuster. No prizes either for realising Boyd's end long before you get there: this is not a life of surprises.

It is, though, one of his better novels. In writing what he calls a 'London book' (although the city is never mentioned), he restricts the canvass of previous work and finds more of a home. Noticeably, it's only when he extends those borders, to take in the family's Eastern European history that the book fails to convince. And while it may lack for real grit and the Brit-crit-pleasing New Science ambition of, say, McEwan's recent, overrated Enduring Love, as a piece of concise, elegant and purely pleasurable writing, it is far easier to recommend.