Mailman

Mailman is a manic and wild creation from one of America’s most interesting and exciting contemporary novelists.

The novel sparkles with dazzlingly intense writing and has an adrenaline-fuelled energy that drives both the reader and Albert Lippincott (aka Mailman) relentlessly onward.

Mailman is at odds with the world and its idiocies; he hates Nestor, the town he lives in; he despises the shallowness of most of the people to whom he daily delivers post; he hates his boss, who is always looking over his shoulder; and he despairs that his few relationships have all ended in failure.

He has a bad habit of secretly opening letters and photocopying them before delivering them, for which he is about to come well and truly – no pun intended – unstuck. A calamitous series of events ensues, dragging poor Mailman down in spite of his best attempts to avert disaster.

Lennon aptly reflects the manic nature of Albert’s mind with gymnastic narrative leaps back and forth between the chaos of the present-day and defining moments from his past. Mailman looks back, mostly with regret but also with a desperate kind of nostalgia, to his childhood, a spell in a psychiatric hospital, doomed relationships, and an abortive episode in Kazakhstan with the Peace Corps. These are hilarious set-pieces, resplendent with cleverly sketched walk-on characters.

Ultimately, however, it is Lennon’s sympathetic evocation of Mailman that holds the book together; Albert has foibles and weaknesses, but he also possesses a dignity that Fate seems hell-bent on destroying.

Lennon has created and grand and moving portrait of a struggling man in a flawed society.