Review: Death of a Ladies’ Man

What attracted me to this book?

The stark red and black cover of a giant stiletto crushing a man? The fact that it’s set in Glasgow? The American Psycho-esque density of the novel? Certainly not the ample praise on the back of the book from male-oriented sources and magazines.

Having recently finished reading American Psycho (and writing an essay for a postgraduate lit course about it), Death of a Ladies’ Man sounded like an intriguing, distinctly Scottish response to Brett Easton Ellis’s oevre. Besides, what woman wouldn’t want a look into the mind of a so-called “ladies man”?

What’s it about?

Protagonist Charlie grew up a “nice guy”, fell in love, married, lost touch with his wife, became a womanizer (though how he pulled this off is debatable). He teaches high school and imagines himself to be an inspiration to his pupils, particularly a sixth-year girl named Monise. Meanwhile, he struggles with his past: an absent father and an uncertain relationship with best friend Nadine.

What did I think?

Alan Bissett does a lot more than explore the psyche of a womanizer. He plays with the spatial elements of the text as well as with the medium by which it is presented. During Charlie’s coke and weed binges, the text squirms across the page as if you are experiencing his high with him. At some points, however, the massive spacing between words and sentences became a bit “too much” and undermined the experimental sections that did aid the narrative. During particularly tense scenes, the book switches to screenplay formatting, and conversation is delivered to reader in quick bursts, silences made more pregnant by the sheer absence of text.

Charlie’s voice is clear and entertaining, particularly in the bursts of stream-of-consciousness scattered throughout the novel. This method did become stifling towards the end, perhaps because of its more meditative and depressive tone devoid of the humor from the beginning. (My favorite line, page 86: “MY COCK IS HARD AND BROODING AND SHAKESPEEEEEAREAN”).

What this text seems to suffer from is too many characters with the same affliction: cheating and amoral men. There is little variety, and the reader often gets bogged down with yet another sob story about a cheating man in someone’s life. Unfortunately, because of this, many of the characters came off as one-sided. The exception being Charlie’s pupils Monise and Simon. While the school scenes were at times too self-aware of their “Dead Poet’s Society” vibe, this plot thread was the only one throughout that did not end entirely as expected and the only one which seemed to affect change in Charlie and the people close to him.

There is a heavy-handedness to much of the symbolism of the text, and it feels at times as though political discussions are forced on the reader at the expense of the plot.

Overall, an intriguing look into the sexual male psyche filtered through the Glaswegian indie scene, but unfortunately weighed down by its reliance on exterior texts instead of allowing characters’ relationships to speak for themselves.

My Rating: 2.5/5

Side note, anyone who’s read American Psycho, should read this article.