The Vagrant by Peter Newman
“The Vagrant is his name. He has no other. Friendless and alone he walks across a desolate, war-torn landscape, carrying nothing but a kit-bag, a legendary sword and a baby. His purpose is to reach the Shining City, last bastion of the human race, and deliver the sword, the only weapon that may make a difference in the ongoing war. But the Shining City is far away and the world is a very dangerous place”.
The Vagrant is sumptuously creepy from head to tentacle. Every character, every location, every visceral exploding of the senses will push your imagination to the limits of it’s darkness and leave you feeling gorged on foulness. I loved it. It is at once both rich and flourishing in detail yet not a word is wasted and the reader is constantly left wanting more before being dragged forward like a captive to the next instalment. It’s not an easy or light read by any means and really requires a bit of effort but I would not hesitate for a second in recommending it to anyone who likes a really dark tale.
Our silent protagonist aids in this desperately exhausting journey because he will not beg or plead his way out of a situation. His eyes and actions do his talking so we are spared possibly repetitious dialogue and forced to suffer along side out hero as he is cheated again and again. Babies are valuable you see. Good meat. The Vagrant himself would be good for spare parts. And the sword…well. Rumours. The Malice. The Uncivil.
So much of the world Newman has created is incredibly alien but it is made all the more haunting by the intrusions of the trappings of humanity. Greed seems to infect everyone and everything except the Vagrant and, even when his generosity gets him into trouble, his choice of pity over anger or revenge is admirable and inspiring. The baby he carries in his arms, who is at once his conscience and his adorable tormentor, guides him with smiles, kicks and crinkled brows. Her vulnerability is terrifying and every time she was set down on the ground whilst her protector faces some foul beast my heart was in my throat.
There are moments of lightness that serve to release the tension and allow the reader a sliver of hope that this quest is actually going to come off. Vesper, the baby, provides many of these, thanks to Newman’s skill in writing silence and movement. Several of these moments involve the goat, their travelling companion and source of milk and the fact that this ill-tempered beastie gets it’s own POV is hilarious.
The present tense omnipotent narration is really interesting. It felt like I was a casual observer being pulled along, watching events but unable to change their course. It was great to have the ability to be everywhere at once but also led to some moments of disconnect. The voice never changed for me, never upped in tempo or excitement or got overly morose, it was consistent the whole way….which was a little unsettling as the events unfolding were by no means boring. I felt like I was watching through the eyes of a sociopath that was quite able to look at and describe the most horrifying and awful things with the same level of connection as someone reading a cake recipe.
“On a block of rusted iron stands what was a man. Like many of the Uncivil’s creature he is robed, the horror of his recreation hidden….His arm is still recognizably human; handless, crowned instead with an old woman’s head. Though the face’s skin is black and shrunken, the people know the features well. Once, the head belonged to their leader. The crowd are no longer disturbed by the sight, just relieved he does not display the other arm”.
Pardon my use of foul language but if one of his hands has been replaced by the shrunken head of the former leader, what the fuck is going on with his other arm, that makes people relieved not to have to look at it. Seriously!?! This book was full of moments like that where you a forced to consider that Peter Newman, while a friendly and harmless looking fellow, could well be one the sickest minds in fiction today. His ideas are crazy but they work, they are disgusting but clever and insistent and he kept pushing the boundaries the whole way without ever sacrificing the characters or the pace.
This is one of the strongest debuts I have ever had the pleasure to read and I think I need to read it again to get closer to a full understanding of the players and how it all wound up. I felt like I had to make quite a lot of assumptions and all though this helped keep the pace going I had a lot of questions at the end of the book. All in all, The Vagrant is wonderfully unique in a most foul manner and I urge you to pick it up.
