Books & Poetry

‘Sacrifices’, Michael Fishwick’s second novel, is perfect book-club fodder – but don’t let that put you off. It’s just that it belongs very much to that category of Ian McEwan-esque contemporary novel that demands to be taken
very seriously indeed.

It opens with the funeral of Christopher Hughes, retired headmaster of a prestigious public school, who has died in disgrace amid allegations that he abused boys in his care. Surprisingly, perhaps, the suggestions of abuse are not dealt with in great detail, though they simmer away in the background. Instead, the novel focuses on Christopher’s troubled relationships with his colleagues and family: though a wonderful teacher, the magnetism that was so effective in the classroom turned to menace and threat outside it. Starting with his adoring daughter Anna, five narrators look back at Christopher’s life, the different viewpoints helping to maintain some ambiguity over his guilt. Delicately and gradually, but with a shocking finale that realises the threat sustained throughout the book, we are made aware of the consequences of sacrifices and compromises made in lives lived unsatisfactorily.

Fishwick’s debut, ‘Smashing People’, was a 1980s satire; ‘Sacrifices’ suggests the more sombre, meaty affair that first book promised to be in its quieter moments. At times Fishwick’s writing is so serious as to be a little heavy-handed, but generally his careful prose suits the tense reminiscence at the novel’s core. Just don’t expect it to be unlike anything else you’ve ever read.