"Slings and Arrows" by Nick McLoughlin

 A pub darts team enters a national competition and starts winning. How far can they go? And how will the private lives of the members affect their progress?

Terry, the main character, married to nurse Pat, is made redundant and has to borrow money to buy a milk round. Then cancer strikes. Meanwhile, Martin his son has rejected going to college and moved in with a girlfriend. Phil's wife is having an affair. Tom's wife, Fiona, is depressed because she can't have children.

With stupendous verisimilitude, this author conjures up the world of the working - often unemployed -  class in 1980s England under the Margaret Thatcher regime. The characters drink beer in and out of pubs, smoke cigarettes, and eat Sunday roasts. They struggle to make ends meet: Terry and Pat are forced to downsize to a static caravan. Leisure activities include a few days at the seaside, a trip to a local beauty spot, coarse fishing, and, of course, darts. The picture is as authentic as a Bruegel; I remember this world.

The plot uses the landmarks of the darts competition and Terry's cancer treatment to give structure to the pace. These create tension and momentum. The focus is on Terry; the other characters also have their narrative arcs (the PoV is a multi-third-person-close perspective) but the real jeopardy comes from Terry battle with first unemployment and then cancer. These are what elicit and retain the reader's sympathy. As for the ending. No spoilers here. I am sure the ending will annoy some readers but I thought it perfect. 

These are real characters, carefully observed, facing real world problems, gaining strength from real relationships. 

There are some great descriptions:

• "Her nose was a contradiction, strong and sharp down the ridge, the nostrils flared and plump. Below it, a deep, wide groove, like the impression made by a child's finger in moist clay, appeared to tug gently on her upper lip." (Ch 20)
• "It was thicker than the dark hair around it and more wiry, like a long white bristle of a painter's brush." (Ch 20)
• "The tide was out, the sea a distant brush stroke of Oxford blue beneath an azure sky." (Ch 25)

And there is humour. One of my favourite moments is when Tom leaves the adoption agency's office to fund a young boy staring at his BMW. He chases him away and says: "Bloody kids!" (Ch 10) I also enjoyed this description of Terry's belly: "His gut, all bought and paid for as he liked to say, overhung the belt on his jeans." (Ch 1)

Selected quotes:

• "The kind of bloke ... that, if he'd been chocolate, he'd have happily eaten himself." (Ch 4)
• "Terry felt saddened, and somehow guilty, at the concern etched in Pat's face, at the pinch of her mouth and the sharp crease between her eyes." (Ch 38)

A very readable and enjoyable book. A perfect antidote to all those shelves of speculative fiction, thriller and crime.

January 2006; 291 pages

Published by The Book Guild in 2024

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God