I approached Matthew Kneale's new book anticipating good times. After all, English Passengers, which won the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year award, was an awe-inspiring work that transported the reader to 19th-century Tasmania. Kneale managed to make the historical setting completely realistic, and wrote convincingly in a clutch of voices.
At first, his short-story collection, Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance, seems promising. Kneale begins with "Stone", a tense story about an ultra-middle-class family which, aiming for the "authentically exotic" holiday, ditches the expensive tour only to end up in the middle of China, lost and entirely dependent on a local guide. The mood quickly darkens as the Winters, bewildered by their saviour's motives, first make fun of him and then destroy his very existence.
As the plot nears its climax, Kneale savours the father's inability to do the right thing, his reversion to the cosy certainties of western life: "All at once he had a picture of their home, with its large sitting room, the white sofas and the view of the garden." It's as if characters from a Boden catalogue had been dropped into a scene from Lord of the Flies.
The next story - "Powder" - is also good. A middle-aged solicitor has his life spiced up when he inadvertently discovers a bag of drugs and a mobile phone that have been dropped by a dealer. The phone starts ringing; he starts selling. Before long, he is making the sort of money he previously could only dream of.
He lets his wife in on the secret, and together they attack the project with gusto. Forget all that stuff about money not buying happiness: where the solicitor was once ashamed of his beaten-up old car, he is now so delighted to be wealthy that he literally rolls in it:
Peter loved the charged feeling in his blood when they drove out in the Mini each evening, and often they would celebrate their sales with lovemaking. Once, laughing at the very idea, they did it in the hallway on a bed of creased banknotes.
Kneale has particular fun with snobs, subtly lampooning a society in which commodities have come to matter more than ethics. The crimes may be small, but the accoutrements are abundant. The cramp-irons required to scale the heights of 21st-century society - smart holiday destinations and car brands, parties in marquees - are so desirable that it does not really matter how they are paid for. Who cares, so long as no one finds you out? Kneale also has a sure command of plot; every one of these "crimes" is a page-turner.
The book would be perfect for commuters or time-poor bed readers, as most of the stories are no more than two dozen pages long. But 24 pages of well-crafted Kneale is not enough. No sooner does a story get going than he finishes it off with a Tales of the Unexpected twist. Just as the wannabe novelist in the story "Sunlight" keeps on writing first chapters until his study is littered with first chapters, so Kneale's perfect little tales, replete with short and witty denouements, eventually pile up out of control. I kept hoping that everything might be tied up in a grand, neat gesture but, halfway through the book, I realised it was not going to happen.
Eventually, the collection fizzles out with an embarrassing attempt to get into the mind of a Palestinian suicide bomber. Kneale may be brilliant at describing the British middle classes and their mid-life crises, but he is not so good on the Middle East. You leave this book with the distinct impression of someone with only half his mind on the job.
