Lanny
Max Porter does something both unique and disquieting in his novel Lanny (2019). Set in a sleepy English village (within commuting distance of London) in modern time, Lanny is family drama set amidst the cacophony of villager voices as overheard by mystical, other-worldly Dead Papa Toothwort. Lanny is an eccentric boy who makes everyone comfortable, everyone but his parents, who have chosen to move to a quiet village in large part for Lanny. From the first page of this genre-bending fiction, Dead Papa Toothwort interrupts the everyday drama of Lanny’s village, but the reader is the only one who knows; the reader and Lanny, perhaps. This is a modern tale that centers around the titular character, Lanny, popping point of view from his mother to his father, to his friend (old, eccentric artist, Pete), to the old woman in the village (Peggy), and, of course, to the mythical, ageless Dead Papa Toothwort who feels like one part Pan, one part goblin. From the beginning it is clear: Lanny is unlike anything you have ever read before.
Somehow, amidst the chaos of all the jumbled, disconnected voices of the village, Porter depicts the tender love of a mother for her eccentric son, the disconnect between a man and his family, and ultimately, the terror felt by all when a child goes missing. Weaving a fantastical character—Dead Papa Toothwort—throughout the lives of the villagers, particularly those closest to Lanny, Porter creates a modern fairytale packed with all-to-real emotion. He captures the chaos of feeling that must descend upon a mother when her son is no where to be found in ways that were at once terrifying and also compelled me to reader every page faster than the last. Lanny builds in suspense as reality blends with nightmare, nightmare with fantasy, and fantasy folds back into realism in ways that left me emotionally raw and at times, mildly confused. But Porter’s project is certainly a clever one. He bends reality into something beyond human experience, and then returns to the simple realisms of two friends drawing in the woods.
The authenticity of emotion portrayed in Porter’s slim novel is so very impressive. His characters are likeable or detestable or maybe a bit of both. Perhaps because I am a mother, I found myself spellbound by Lanny’s “mum” and all the emotions her point of view reflects. Porter masterfully moves his reader from one character’s perspective to the next and back again, in such a way that he creates a village within his novel. And coursing throughout his village is Dead Papa Toothwort, a character who is indescribable and yet winds his way through the novel’s suspenseful plotline.
To describe this book is challenging. The characters lives and points of view interweave with one another, just as the typescript of their voices (overheard by Dead Papa Toothwort) meander upon the page. Fantasy and reality collide in Porter’s Lanny, and leave the reader wondering what they just witnessed: a dream, a nightmare, a fairytale? Or perhaps Porter’s Lanny is a plea for all of us to disengage with the minutia of our everyday lives and wonder at the magic that no doubt exists just below the leaf litter, or in the bond between friends. Perhaps Lanny is also a cautionary tale of sorts; the nightmarish moments of Porter’s novel suggest the tragedy that might befall us when we fail to open ourselves to things that may be beyond our reason.
Bibliography:
Porter, Max. Lanny. Graywolf Press: 2019.
