Andaluc\u00eda is famous for its variety: high alpine mountains and snow-capped peaks, river plains and rolling olive groves, sun-baked coastlines and arid deserts. It is the perfect setting for Neil Rollinson\u2019s debut novel, which is its own kind of spectacular mosaic. Built from short, seemingly discrete chapters that take us between Spain in 2003 and the coalfields of Northumberland in the 70s and 80s, The Dead Don\u2019t Bleed coheres into an extraordinarily tense and tender\u00a0portrait of two brothers trying to\u00a0escape their father\u2019s gangland past.<\/p>\n
Until now, Rollinson has been known as a poet; his collection Talking Dead was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa poetry prize<\/a>. Here he brings his talent for compressed evocation to an exploration of fraternal rivalry and the\u00a0enduring impact of a violent patriarchy. If you took Frank and his brother Gordon apart on the autopsy table, he writes, \u201cyou\u2019d find the same bones, the same blood. Almost everything interchangeable. The corkscrews of DNA, the cells, the posture, the downcast glance.\u201d But from a young age, change is afoot within Frank. He knows his father has\u00a0\u201chigh hopes for him\u201d in the family business of petty crime: \u201cFrank Bridge. King of Northumberland\u201d. But Frank wants to be a different kind of king. He\u00a0carries within himself a \u201cyearning for something more expansive\u201d \u2013 the\u00a0kind of dream that could get him\u00a0killed\u00a0in his family\u2019s closed world\u00a0of\u00a0criminal secrecy.<\/p>\n Rollinson\u2019s novel is heartbreaking, but he is no sentimentalist<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like his author, Frank is drawn to\u00a0poetry \u2013 particularly the work of Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca. He is also dangerously drawn to his brother\u2019s girlfriend, Carol, often glimpsed with a mop and bucket in hand at the local pub, cleaning up after the men. Frank \u201cloves to watch her move: tough, big boned, elegant but strong. He\u2019s seen her put men flat on their backs for touching her up. A single punch.\u201d In north-east England, \u201cno one messes with Carol\u201d \u2013 and even fewer mess with\u00a0poetry. The twin risks of Frank involving himself in forbidden lust and forbidden literature power the whole plot, giving the novel the through line of a quest narrative. When Gordon and Carol flee to Spain with the proceeds of\u00a0a robbery that went disastrously wrong, Frank, in the wake of his father\u2019s death, makes the irrevocable decision to track them down.<\/p>\n Rollinson is expert at capturing the\u00a0long shadow cast by a complicated father. Laurence is a local gangster who, through his own perverse code of\u00a0ethics and innate charisma, has established himself as \u201ca man of stature. Respected. Everyone stopping to chat.\u201d His \u201cloud laugh echoes across the room. A man among men\u201d. Frank is caught between wanting to please his parent and wanting to escape the\u00a0family\u2019s gaze entirely. His \u201cfather\u2019s\u00a0scrutiny is like a physical manifestation,\u201d Rollinson writes. Frank \u201calways feels it in his throat, as if he\u2019s being throttled\u201d. The novel captures the\u00a0way close observation can be an expression of love, but also a kind of\u00a0violence. In the Northumberland boozers where men \u201cget mortal in the afternoon\u201d, pints \u201cglow in the river light, amber gold and black, like beakers in a chemistry lab\u201d. Many of these men\u00a0will drink themselves to death. What catches your eye can kill you.<\/p>\n One of this novel\u2019s many successes is\u00a0in capturing the terror of illicit attraction \u2013 of admitting to yourself that\u00a0you secretly want something more. Readers of Karl Geary, Douglas Stuart<\/a> or\u00a0Ross Raisin<\/a> will appreciate the way Rollinson blends social realism with a knack for capturing risky intimacies. The \u201ccreeping deprivation\u201d of Northumberland in the Thatcher era \u2013 the closure of its core industries, \u201cmore and more lads\u00a0on the dole\u201d \u2013 is put in beautiful contrast with Frank\u2019s longing for his brother\u2019s girlfriend. In\u00a0one lovely, expertly judged scene, Frank and Carol sit \u201con a wall by a waste ground\u201d as the rain beats down around them. A\u00a0\u201cdemolition squad takes down a terrace behind them. A\u00a0whole street. Houses he\u2019s known, and been in.\u201d A fireplace \u201changs, mid-air, levitating, its grate gaping. Improvements, they say. For whom?\u201d<\/p>\n That question \u2013 \u201cfor whom?\u201d \u2013 reverberates on every page. How much of our lives should be spent in service of the family that made us, as opposed to the family we hope to make? Spain seems to offer the relief of fresh contrasts: \u201cthe shadow and light, the\u00a0scent of orange blossom, the endless, undulating fields and the high, unblemished sky\u201d. But every landscape in this novel holds its ghosts. Lorca was murdered in Andaluc\u00eda, and\u00a0his exact resting place remains a\u00a0mystery \u2013 one echoed in a final moment of violence that is all the more\u00a0powerful for being played out largely off stage, in the space between sentences, the gap between chapters. Rollinson\u2019s novel is heartbreaking, but he is no sentimentalist. Life and love spring up from the cracks, he seems to say, but damage continues to be done.<\/p>\n