Paul Bailey's collection of odd-ball characters that make up Gabriel's lament are treated with a humanity that made them real. The overbearing father, the clever but shy, reserved son, the mother that appears to leave for no reason, the van Pelts: the fathers crony friends, Katherine the mad aunt and the collection of character that the son Gabriel Harvey meets in his struggle for independence all pack the novel with characters that feel might live round the corner. The story is told in the first person by Gabriel who blames his father for his mothers disappearance and for all that appears wrong in his world.

Oswald Harvey; Gabriel's father dominates this book. His presence is felt in almost every aspect of his son's life even though he left home when he was seventeen. Bailey's portrait of Oswald Harvey is nothing short of magnificent, A working class man with all the prejudices of a working class conservative inherits a large sum of money from a titled employer that he served for a number of years. The money entitles him to become the snob he had always been, but it drives away his wife who is thirty years younger and the lecturing hectoring father becomes too much for his shy son. The trick that Bailey pulls off is that however bad the son's view of his father appears to be, the reader never loses the sight that Oswald is probably doing his best and that the son can also appear ungrateful and difficult. The book is set mainly in London from the 1950's onwards and certainly the racist, sexist, snobbish views of Oswald are not surprising to anybody who remembers those times in a working class community. The problem for Gabriel is that he cannot cope with his father's presence and takes to hero worshipping his mother.
Gabriel eventually becomes a writer and his only novel 'Lords of Light' hits pay-dirt and an invitation for a reading in Minnesota (America) when he is still a 40 year old virgin, and a legacy from his father Oswald who has died a double amputee focuses his attention on the past that haunts him, but he realises that there is still much work to do before he can move on.

Bailey gives Oswald all the best stories and all the best lines, it is a portrait slightly grotesque, but alway humorous: a loveable old rogue might be stretching it a bit, but this is how Oswald must appear to his cronies down at the local public house. When he comes into the money he stops drinking beer and takes to drinking whiskey with his new friends in his splendid new house. Gabriel nicknamed the starch-angel by his school friends and Piss-a-bed by his father cannot compete and must get away for his own sanity. However Gabriel's stories taken from his novel 'Lords of Light' which he quotes to his new American audience, do not compete with the stories his father told. Much of the book is focused on Gabriel's issues with his family and his own prejudices and fantasies, but in the final section a new theme emerges and it is the power of religious preachers, con-artists and charlatans over the working classes. Gabriel's book and his American visit introduces this aspect to the novel and while it is easy to ridicule some of the American TV evangelists it does not quite sit with the majority of the novel.

It is a bildungsroman and the story is told mainly in linear fashion, but Bailey is able to include some flashes forward and flashes backwards that intrigue the reader and help fill out the story, without turning into a stream of conscious type puzzle. The writing is good throughout with some wit, but no self serving wisecracks, it feels a little old fashioned in places (the book was first published in 1986), but this fits well with the period that the story covers and the milieu of 1950's London. [Gabriel's Lament] was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker prize and Bailey a grammar school boy from Battersea in London is perfectly at home with his subject matter. The book does not pretend to deal with most of the grand themes of literature, but within it's perhaps limited aims it strikes me as entirely successful, if a little quaint. A four star read for me, but if this is the only book that I read by Paul Bailey I will be satisfied. ( )