The Screen Savers, by Bryan Romaine

My good friend Bryan Romaine has published his first novel, The Screen Savers. I was fortunate enough to be given an advance reading copy in March of this year, which I read, thoroughly enjoyed and then reviewed.  I've been holding on to that review ever since, and now that the book has finally been published I can tell the rest of the world what I thought of it!

The book can be purchased in hard copy or Kindle form from Amazon on the link below:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B073JPH5CD/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499073004&sr=8-1&keywords=bryan+romaine

The Screen Savers.
Literature has a long history of eccentrics and obsessives, from Cervantes’ Don Quixote, through Laurence Sterne’s Uncle Toby and HG Wells’ various tragic specialists, up to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time and beyond. In The Screen Savers Bryan Romaine has created another in this line of complicated, neurotic, eccentric, fallible and ultimately human literary characters in the simply-named Adam. I think anyone who has lived on their own for any period of time will be able to relate to Adam – either positively or negatively. But at a basic level this reviewer found him to be an endearing creation with a real sense of truth about him.

This is Bryan’s first novel, and stylistically it is a very confident work. The narrative voice gives the reader a sense of immediacy and pace. The only exceptions to this are occasional predictive clauses informing the reader of events or decisions further down the line; these serve not to spoil, merely to whet the appetite or ensure that the reader’s focus remains aligned with the authorial voice. It’s a subtle hand-holding technique within what, on the surface, appears to be a text that lays itself and its central character completely bare to the reader.

The author’s confidence, and competence, is further displayed by the fact that the book is largely under-written. Peripheral detail and description is scant at times, yet there are also occasions where detail and information is thrust at us with almost manic fervour, reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis’ Postmodern classic American Psycho. Somewhere within this uneven landscape of tropes and signifiers the reader gets a very real sense of Adam’s world and surroundings. Scenes don’t always pick up directly from where the previous one left off – although where there are narrative gaps or jumps the reader is very soon able to fill in the blanks. We may not get to experience every scene or every moment, but we still know pretty much exactly what’s gone on – and that displays the author’s skill; Bryan has an acute understanding of how to craft the text in an engaging way. Symptomatic of these narrative jumps is the pervading sense of the sections or chapters as a modestly sequential collection of flash fiction pieces, all adding together to create a cohesive whole.

The short sections gives the reader the impression that they are steaming through the book at pace – which can be a bonus for those who like to read on their commute to work. But The Screen Savers is deceptive in this; Adam’s voice, his worries, hang-ups and obsessions actually ferment a much deeper understanding in the reader’s mind than the simple words we read on the page in these brief scenes and moments. We start to fill in gaps ourselves; we absorb information and use it to clarify or justify actions already witnessed or those yet to come. So The Screen Savers is very much a collaborative text existing as a contemporaneous whole; the reader is constantly editing the text in their head and revising their understanding of characters and events as they progress through the work as more and more becomes clear. So the reader unwittingly works with the author in real time to create their individual experience, rather than sitting back and being dictated to.

In common with many previous texts fuelled by obsessive, eccentric characters, The Screen Savers is naturally very funny. The prospect that someone could be mistaken for Clive Owen and also Martina Navratilova paints some wonderful images in the reader’s head, for example. The humour is situational and character-driven through reactions and mannerisms; it is never forced and ‘gags’ (such as any are) are never set up in a contrived way. For example – and this owes much again to the pictures that the text conjures in the reader’s head - there is a persistent reference to deceased Scottish actor Alastair Sim. Now, okay, some younger readers may need to contextualise him, but the conceit is planted with perfect legitimacy and once there the obsessive revisiting of it, and the resultant mental hoops Adam puts himself through, create some extraordinarily comedic moments and images.

There is a notional ‘story’ running through the book, but this isn’t a plot-driven page-turner; it’s more of a character study as Adam comes to terms with various aspects of his life and his own mental challenges. One thing the book does expertly is show that no one is normal, or ‘ordinary’. Everyone reveals themselves to be flawed in some way – either in their own eyes or through those of Adam. Everyone has hang ups or oddities that they accommodate and deal with on a day to day basis in their own way.

Even though the story of the fight for screen seven at the local cinema is somewhat ancillary the author skilfully creates a sense of increasing tension as the narrative builds towards its conclusion – again this is achieved organically and not through any forced manipulation of characters and incidents. This produces a real sense of elation at the conclusion, rewarding the level of involvement and commitment the reader has invested in the characters and the text. The conclusion itself is appended by some wonderfully humorous (and organic) moments. We don’t get a pay-off scene between Adam and Yvette, and if there had to be a negative I’d say that Adam and Yvette’s relationship is a little too scant and under-written after she returns from her weekend away, but that’s really a minor quibble amongst a whole load of positives. 

To sum up, The Screen Savers is very well - and sympathetically - written, and I’ve greatly enjoyed the experience of reading it. I felt I could relate to Adam and to his situation in life; I understood the mental hoops he puts himself through in his relationships with other people. I’ve relished the challenges of the text, it’s lightness of touch and the shorthand way it has of encouraging the reader to infill any narrative gaps. Although I appreciated the bite-size chapters I really didn’t want to put it down once I’d started it, and I can envisage future re-readings with time set aside to consume it all in one go.

I hope this book gets the wide audience and appreciation that I feel it deserves, and that we get further works from Bryan Romaine as a result.