Twinkle by David Silverman (From Watford Observer)

Twinkle by David Silverman

4:11pm Friday 13th February 2009 in

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If you’ve ever wondered what goes on in a secondary school staff room, this self-published novel by Watford architect David Silverman will give you some insight.

New age man Andy Avecore is saved from despair following the death of his too-good-to-be-true wife Karen, by taking a job heading up the English department of an improving state school on a whim because he liked the look of one of the female members of staff.

What appears on the surface as a classic love affair gains depth and interest through David’s attention to detail and focus on each major and some minor characters who inhabit the common room between classes.

There’s soft and compliant Gillian, hiding her bookishness behind an unorthodox appearance, lecherous art master Mr Mason, with his jazz leanings and loose morals, matronly Marcia the joker in the pack and Margery, diving headlong into spinsterhood after years of tending to her ailing kin. At the centre of it all is Jinny, the true blue, jolly hockey sticks type and object of Andy’s affections whose shotgun wedding while at university has mapped out her life as a support act to her ambitious husband and twin teenage sons.

Early on in the book the course of literature does not run all that smooth – the stream-of-consciousness chapter that introduces the reader to Jinny is a mishmash of tenses – but stick with it and there’s much to enjoy in this debut.

His women are paradoxical: Jinny – gung-ho, jingoistic and privileged yet with a severely repressed streak and Gillian – outwardly free thinking yet desperately submissive; and don’t even get me started on the tragic lot of poor Sally mentioned in just a few throwaway lines. However, the way David writes about relationships in their early stages – when we suffer from self-doubt or adopt a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, is spot on.

Twinkle by David Silverman is published by Matador, priced £7.99, www.troubador.co.uk/matador