Chaplin & Company is an alarming proposition for anyone with a low threshold for the cute and quirky. Its main character, Odeline Milk, is a mime artist. She is serious and eccentric. In bed she lies on her back ‘as if she has been arranged this way and told not to move’. She wears brogues several sizes too big for her feet.
When we meet her, she is moving into a canal boat in London. Her mother, with whom she lived in Arundel, West Sussex, has just died. Odeline does not dwell on this. Instead she is thinking about her new life. In London, she thinks, her artistic endeavours will be appreciated at last.
Two things work to counteract any offensive cuteness. One is the sureness of the writing; the other is the comedy of Odeline herself. She is brilliantly snooty. The children at her school she remembers as ‘tiny ants rushing relentlessly back and forth... [She] knew that she was different, that she breathed a rarer air.’
The novel, the first by Mave Fellowes, is a story about growing up, about bereavement, and about friendship. Its themes are heavy, but its tone is light – it feels sort of like a stylish animated film, wry and easy and mischievous.
As Odeline gets to know her small patch of London canal, we are introduced to the characters who will nudge the plot into life (and facilitate the protagonist’s moral transformation). They are fringe-of-society people: an undocumented worker from eastern Europe, a homeless woman singing show tunes, a hippy-ish boat owner with a map of Wiltshire tattooed on his chest.
A key character is Odeline’s boat, which, like the book itself, is called Chaplin & Company. Its back story is revealed in instalments. Former owners are drawn with easy, broad strokes. The author has a talent for conveying big parts of a life quickly, condensing a person’s sadnesses to a few pages. Very occasionally, there is a mis-step, and a character acts or speaks in a way that isn’t entirely convincing. But if you were reading for fun you wouldn’t notice.
Apparent, too, is a reverence for physical things – from the canal boat, which seems to breathe, to a potted plant, which saves someone’s life. Fellowes is a writer who cares about objects.
The novel is at its best when the pace picks up. Set-piece scenes are played beautifully. Eventually they culminate in a showdown with a gangster in a supermarket (involving a carton of fruit juice and a screwdriver). Disparate plot strands are woven together in a fantastically neat way. All the characters are integral – there are no extraneous bits. The novel is perfectly formed, but not pat: some characters find redemption, others just carry on.
Chaplin & Company by Mave Fellowes is published by Jonathan Cape (£16.99)