Another freebie from Amazon. The best of the batch because its the one I was least likely to have come across on my own. The Crockatt & Powell gang will enjoy the fact that this book is dedicated to Scott Pack 🙂 (The book is being published by his new company, The Friday Project)

This is a delightful little book. Unfortunately the emphasis has to go on “little” as much as on “delightful” because it is more of a novella than a novel, with only 172 pages, and lots of white space on those pages. Not a book for a holiday read – you would finish it in the departure lounge.

Its a good job that the book is well-written and enjoyable, although the nature of the writing makes it even easier to devour the whole thing in one session. I think its better to have a good short book than an appallingly bad long one, and literature is not like groceries where unit pricing should guide your buying choices, but its worth pointing out for the benefit of anyone who is worried about the words-per-pound of a book.

The story concerns a Jamaican called Ezekiel, or Ez, from the time he starts a new job working in a Gents toilet in London, which is a popular venue for cottaging. The staff come under pressure from the council to prevent the sexual activity, and then face the dilemma of what to do when success results in job-threatening loss of revenues.

As far as I know Warwick Collins is not Jamaican but whether he is or not he has a good ear for expressing the rhythm of West Indian speech but in a subtle way: this is not like Trainspotting or Feersum Endjinn or even The Book of Dave where it is a struggle to read the language of the characters.

In fact everything in the book is a bit subtle or discrete. One of the main plot elements is the way customers of the toilets are having sex in the cubicles yet there is nothing explicit or even slightly smutty in the way it is referred to. Racial attitudes are also covered, from a slightly unusual perspective, but without any preaching at all.

It is up to the reader to make as much or as little as they want of the issues. The book can be read as a low-key and slightly amusing story, or as a series of examples of tolerance, with one notable exception. The religious toilet attendants are mostly tolerant of the goings-on in their workplace, the Christian attendants are tolerant of their Rastafarian colleague and his pair of wives, and Ez becomes more tolerant of his son’s choice of profession.

I might have preferred the book to have been a bit longer, with a bit more detail, but that would have changed its overall feel and may well have spoiled it.

Gents is now ten years old, having been originally published in 1997. It has now been picked up by a new publisher who is pulling out all the stops in promoting it through several Internet channels, which is admirable: the book does deserve a wider readership.

In fact it deserves to be picked up and adapted to film. I think it would make a brilliant British farce in the right hands. The more I think of it, the more likely it seems so my recommendation is to read the book now so that you can complain in a few years that the book was much more serious than the film.