It's a part of jazz lore: in the summer of 1961, Scott LaFaro, a talented young bassist with the Bill Evans Trio, died in a car accident at the age of 25. With his death, jazz lost one of its most promising double bassists. Evans himself was inconsolable. His eccentric behaviour grew increasingly erratic until, finally, he seemed to vanish. He would not be heard from for many months. Around this incident, Owen Martell has fashioned an introspective, original novel – his first in English (his previous two books were written in Welsh). The book focuses less on LaFaro's death than on how it affects Bill Evans's family members, all of whom seek out, or are sought out by, Bill in his grief.
Intermission is told from four perspectives: Bill's brother, Harry, once a fellow musician but now a family man; his overprotective mother, Mary, who was Bill's first piano teacher; his father, Harry Sr, a distant, unfeeling man whose relationship with Bill is full of awkwardness; and finally Bill himself, who can barely understand his own needs. The novel's structure mirrors a piece of music, with discrete voices whose truths intersect and diverge. The similarity in the narratives gives their polyphony a collective authority; this is a family, the writing seems to claim, and for better or for worse, it will hold together like one.
It is hard to write about figures of recent history in a way that feels authentic and true, but Bill Evans is drawn here in all his quirkiness and mutability. In one scene, Harry is trailing Bill through the streets of New York, unsure why he doesn't just approach his brother, but convinced that Bill doesn't know he's there. All of a sudden, Bill stops short, and in an almost macabre moment, turns and looks directly at his brother. "They seemed to stare at each other for a few seconds and Bill even took a few steps towards Harry." But just as sharply, Bill turns back and continues on his way. There is something gently comic and terribly sad in that erratic gesture. It feels just odd enough to be real.
Yet, for all the book's grace, there are some stilted passages, too. We find ourselves privy to realisations, recognitions, prophesies. Too many musings are full of portent, and the simplest everyday moments often lead to shattering epiphanies. Take this passage, from Mary's narrative: "Mary tried to recall the thoughts that had occupied her so robustly during the night but felt them flee her, puffed out even as they seemed mostly likely to re-form. In their place sat a peculiar feeling of having been led into them as though into a trial – of all she hadn't said over the years, and all the small daily hopes that had sustained or deceived her at their pleasure, staining her slowly before being drained off into some dank reserve."
At such moments the characters feel straitjacketed by their endless self-scrutiny. Of course, this is part of the point – that the members of this disjointed family can never reach a deeper understanding of each other. But sometimes a glance is just a careless glance. And such moments of carelessness are all the more fraught for being natural.
At its best, this novel stands as a well-written lament. It is a clear-eyed exploration of a jazz intermission, of the forced break in the chaos, and an apt tribute to a music so full of life that even a pause, a silence, can go down howling.
• Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues is published by Serpent's Tail.
