A gripping, contemporary echo of Joyce’s Ulysses that bursts with its own creative vigor
Thom Evans’s experiences over twenty-four hours at the end of his work day bear similarities to those of his century-old predecessor from James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom.
Like Bloom, Thom is the everyman antihero, living an unenviable humdrum life: getting chubby, hating his drab job at a condom factory, making the most of his relationship with his long-time partner. Like Molly Bloom, Samantha Freeman still attracts, but her beauty is fading. She has deep personal issues that complicate their lives, much like how the loss of infant Rudy affected the Blooms. Thom’s father, who died in a horrific accident, is a hauntingly palpable presence for the son.
After work, Thom goes to a bar to wait for Samantha. From there the couple will move on to a masquerade party, with Thom dressing up as a condom. The party gets raunchy and revealing in disturbing ways that become too much for our hero, compelling him to leave. Only his evening continues to deteriorate into the wee hours in an urbanized odyssey that extends with his efforts at reconciliation the next day.
The storytelling adopts many hallmarks of Ulysses, such as the stream of consciousness delving into Thom’s mind and the use of em dashes (—) for dialogue. There is also plenty in the way of puns and innuendo, with Thom’s vocation offering fertile ground for material. Several of Thom’s prosaic experiences will be amusingly recognizable to anyone familiar with Joyce’s classic work. Such as when taking a bath to wash away the dirt after awakening from his disastrous evening out:
“His plump stomach rolled across the surface of the water and bobbed with the current. Floating above and burning, a fleshly sunrise. He tried to ignore it, pretending, but he couldn’t. The blinding thing.”
However, there are distinct differences. Bloom’s odyssey begins in the morning while for Thom it begins twelve hours later. Then there’s the sequencing of story time. In Ulysses it’s chronological while here the pattern alternates between day and night in opposite directions until scattering with the crashing of Thom’s inner world.
It’s easy to fall into a trap of over-reverence via imitation, but the author successfully rides that line. While Thom and other characters parallel those of Joyce, their temperaments and relational dynamics are natural and incidental, not at all contrived or made to fit. The Joycean experimental spirit is ever-present, but, like a child breaking away to learn on its own, Thom’s story comes to fend for itself, finding its own way. Particularly in how the concluding chapters get both surreal and dramatic and prose more fitting Thom’s devolving persona:
“He . . . offered the record to the platter, excusing the needle from its pedestal. The thin concentric furrows, the fingerprints of the platter, spun wildly into a wobbly black convulsion. The needle descended like a giraffe’s great bowing head to kiss the ground.”
Ulysses has an academic sheen to complement its grit whereas the world of Thom Evans is sheen-less grit. This isn’t merely an imitation exercise or pastiche, and there’s no aura of pretension. Thom’s personal odyssey is intense and gripping on its own and crasser in a way that’s more relatable for a twenty-first century reader. This novel is also more compact and accessible than its progenitor, at least until its startling end.
Unwrap Your Candy will instantly appeal to those who admire Joyce, especially Ulysses, which, if not already apparent, includes this reviewer. But one needn’t have read Ulysses to enjoy this work. An artful contemporary work that resonates with the origins of literary modernism. Unwrap Your Candy serves as a compelling gateway to tackling one of the greatest challenging novels of all time.
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