The Fathers by John Niven review – class satire with grit

The Guardian

2 days ago

They're an unlikely duo. Jada is a petty criminal who lives hand to mouth in a cramped 60s tower block and can't remember how many children he has. Dan is a TV producer with a Tesla outside his mansion and who – after five years of trying and six rounds of IVF – is about to meet his first child.
The pair encounter each other outside the sliding doors of Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University hospital, where Dan takes sips of cold air while he comes to terms with the wonder and terror of first-time parenthood and Jada sneaks a quick fag. Dan examines Jada's vigilant eyes and seasonally inappropriate sportswear; Jada clocks Dan's Rolex and works out how quickly he could take him in a fight. They bump into each other again in the lift a few days later, laying the seeds for a relationship that will reveal what divides them and what they share, building to a climax of kinship and betrayal.
Since leaving his job as an A&R manager in 2002, John Niven has written novels and screenplays that mix industry satire (pop, publishing, film) with sometimes eye-popping hedonism; presumably both will feature in his next project, a 2026 play about Blur and Oasis called The Battle. Yet while there's a fair bit of hard living in The Fathers, Niven's latest also shows his softer side, as the two fortysomething Glaswegian protagonists manage domesticity. Dan obsessively childproofs his house, buying expensive baby accessories and doing his best to be the perfect dad to Tom, while Jada tries to be more present with his girlfriend Nicola and new son Jayden than he has been for his other children – for which read 'not very'.
For all Dan's efforts, the mums take on the greatest share of child rearing, giving the dads space to transform their careers. Dan, bored with his wildly popular TV series McCallister (think Taggart meets Hamish MacBeth), aims to kill off the main character and write a novel. Jada, meanwhile, has a contact at Prestwick airport who can siphon off military surplus meant for Ukraine – a gig he thinks could set him up for life.
Classic Scottish literary themes of duality, sentiment and booze are rarely far from the surface, most of them viewed through the prism of class. In the hospital, Dan's wife, Grace, has a private room and a smoothie that 'cost more than wine and tasted like cut grass'. On Nicola's bedside are a pack of cigarettes, a giant Toblerone and a bottle of Irn-Bru. In the months that come, Jayden's sippy cup is filled with the fizzy nectar, while Nicola and Jada enjoy the occasional blow-out with beer from 'PriceBeaster', plus ecstasy and heroin. Down the road, the West End's gentrified stretches do a steady trade in 'macchiatos, pastel de natas and designer knitwear'.
There's plenty of inequality, hypocrisy and self-destruction on show, but Niven is also here for the laughs in a book that is sometimes very funny, but also happy to lean into cliche. You yearn to hear from someone who's neither an upper-middle-class twit nor a feckless chancer, or to hear a man articulate his feelings without the spurs of alcohol or desperation. Yet Niven never forgets his characters' humanity, and there's some fine detail on the way, whether comic (brushing a baby's teeth is like trying to 'draw a moustache on a live eel with a felt-tip pen') or poetic (in a brighter moment, Nicola marvels at the city, 'aw golden and peach and the river was dead flat and calm and there wiznae a soul around').
As The Fathers gets going, Niven tightens his narrative like a noose. By a third of the way in, the book is veering between unputdownable and put-it-down-quick-before-something-bad-happens. Jada's airport connection unearths a crate of pistols, which he aims to sell to a Northern Irish terrorist group, while Dan suffers a shocking disaster that flings him out of his herringbone-floored home into Jada's world of dodgy deals, sporadic violence and daytime pints.
The result is a comic melodrama that's never dull, and a satire that hits most of its targets. After the darkness Niven lets in, the ending feels a touch glib, but the slow comradeship that grows between the two leads is charming nonetheless. The Fathers is a fine choice for anyone who likes a little grit in their holiday read.
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The Fathers by John Niven is published by Canongate (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.