Shuttlecock – Graham Swift

The narrator, Prentis, works in a small civilian unit of the police where records on redundant incomplete investigations are held pending resolution or indeed forever as the case may be. His relationship with his boss, Quinn, is strained; he suspects Quinn is setting him impossible tasks, to find links and connections that don’t exist - to test him or to break him. Bear in mind this is the 1980’s so this work involves paper records and requires clerical and mental dexterity.

Relationships at home are no better. He is a bully to his wife and two sons. He imposes his will and gets sullen obedience in return. One bone of contention is his refusal to take them out on Sundays; instead, he visits his institutionalised father who has suddenly become mute after a breakdown.

That is another complicated relationship. His father was always a distant figure and much of what Prentis knows of him he has gleaned from an autobiographical account of his WWII exploits as an agent and then a prisoner in occupied France.

Things build to a head as the older son flexes his adolescent independence. Prentis finds himself between a father who won’t speak and a son who won’t listen. However, his boss eventually opens up and takes Prentis into his confidence about the work he has been set. Prentis will have to face up to some stark choices.

The portrayal of the decidedly odd character of Prentiss is well done. His self-centred view of the world is made to make sense no matter how distasteful his actions. The father-son dynamics are explored with perceptiveness. And though Prentis’s life is short on action and adventure, there is plenty of that in the extensive extracts from his father’s wartime account.

It is concise at just over two hundred pages, and though published in 1981 it does not seem dated in style. In summary, a curious period piece.