(courtesy Hachette Australia)
One of the many ways we cope with grief is to fall in on ourselves.
Collapsing into some sort of dark, emotional blackhole feels less demanding, less stressful than continuing to engage with a world which has taken so much from us and which will never, can never, be quite the same again.
At the moment the searing pain of grief first hits us it feels like the sane and sensible, and ONLY, thing to do, and while for many of us, life calls and we reawaken somehow (god only knows how) and we move on (though you never quite do, right?), for others that clarion call to live again never quite penetrates the layers of terrible brief wrapped around like some sort of emotional bullet proof vest.
One of those others is Frank, a once-highly successful novelist who has gone from a happily married man of almost forty years standing to the ballsy, fun, thoughtful Marcie to a grumpy curmudgeon who won’t leave his home and who, most certainly, does want to have anything to do with the irrepressibly avuncular six-year-old next door, Red (short for Leonard but he likes the self-chosen contraction far more, and truth be told, it really suits the firecracker of a kid).
But Red, hurting from losing his dad on a day-to-day basis to divorce – a dad, who, by the way, seems unable to find the time to take his son anywhere – and missing his friends and old school now he and his mum have had to move halfway across London, won’t take “NO!” for an answer and so the most unlikely and touching of friendships begins.
Red scrunched his face and thought for a second, then nodded enthusiastically. ‘I could draw something for the mister next door!’
His mum’s shoulders slumped. ‘Great.’
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, same-old, same old – have we not read, and read often, stories of two unlikely people coming together and remaking each other in a far more happy and healed image?
Well, yes, in one sense, you have read this story many times before, but while the basic tropes and beats of Frank & Red are very much in place, it’s the remarkably moving things that author Matt Coyne do with it that really set it apart.
For a start, and this is significant, he doesn’t begin to pretend that you can just wave some sort of magic wand, or more to the point, start a friendship between a highly-intelligent, super talkative six-year-old and a man in his late sixties who’s had it with the outside world and the extreme hurt it can cruelly hand out, and everything will suddenly be okay.
Life, and grief and pain simply aren’t that acquiescent, and while there is great healing power in belonging and friendship, the searing toll of losing everything you hold precious and dear is more than enough to hold off any sort of healing wave that a bright, new, unstoppable friendship might have in its arsenal.
Or is it?
(courtesy Hachette UK)
The thing is, Red, who’s battling an unfriendly new school and worse a terrible bully, and who needs someone in his corner, besides his loving and hurting mum, will not be denied, and while Frank sees him at first as an annoyance and a nuisance he simply doesn’t need, Red simply sees someone new and interesting who’s very much worth talking to.
And so, despite Frank’s best efforts, talk they do, and when events conspire to bring them into even closer company, it emerges that maybe they need each other more than either of them realise.
There is so much warmth and love in Frank & Red, and the joy is that it’s not expressed as something cheesy and twee, all life-affirming, greeting card-ready sentiments and moments, but rather as the stuff of real life, as the story of two very hurt people at opposite ends of life’s journeys who find each other in the trenches and realise that here is someone who can see them onto the rest of the journey.
Of course, Red is too young to really understand what he’s doing in one sense; all he sees is someone who’s fascinating to be around and who has a million things the curious young boy can explore and find out about.
But Frank has some big decisions to make – will he stay in his grief-enshrouded redoubt, talking to the “ghost” of his still-feisty dead wife or will he take the hand of friendship, and unwitting new beginnings, offered by Red and reconnect with the world, lost friends and an estranged only child?
‘Right, well. We just need to let that set, and then we can put the fence panel back in.’ Frank turned to find Red there with his hand raised.
‘What?’
‘High five?’
‘No.’
This being one of those redemptive fairytales that celebrates connectivity, community and belonging, there’s little doubt that Frank’s grudging answer will be “Yes”; but don’t take that to mean that Frank & Red is some sort of trite, easily-predictable story of healing and new starts.
Because, again, while it is that, and in so many wonderfully profound and deeply touching, and even funny ways that stay with you long after the first page, it is also fiercely real, unflinchingly honest and richly grounded, a tale of healing and hope that readily acknowledges how deep the pit of hurt and grief and pain that any sort of walk towards a promising, more connected future has to first clamber out of it.
This is a book that holds forth the promise of what can follow after the worst moments of your life, but which also doesn’t minimise or trivialise them, and in so doing, makes the joyful happily-ever-after that results feel like the stuff of real life and not some hopeful fever dream committed to paper.
Frank & Red is a joy and gem, one of those novels that isn’t just funny, heartwarming and delightful to read, and it most certainly so with two lead characters who are thoughtfully and richly real, but which looks at life, knows how fearsome an enemy it can be but which reasons, quite rightly as it turns out, that friendship, true friendship, is more than a match for it and may not make all the difference in two very fractured worlds.